


Revisions

by leaper182



Series: Sketches of the Soul [3]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-02-23 05:03:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2535149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leaper182/pseuds/leaper182
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seventeen years after "Indelible", Ori is going on a quest to slay a dragon, and reclaim a homeland.</p><p>And he's going to have to deal with Dwalin while he's doing it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Red Boar Inn

**Author's Note:**

> As always, my warmest, deepest thanks to ForAllLove, Penniform, and Elsajeni for their tireless beta-reading efforts. This fic might not have made it past the planning stages were it not for them.
> 
> The prompt that this fic follows is located on the Hobbit Kink Meme [here](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/3651.html?thread=8328515#t8328515).

Ori was sure that he would have been able to withstand the grey morning, the slightly-too-cold dampness in the air, and even the fact that his backpack seemed to _gain_ weight with each mile that they walked, if it weren’t for the stupid rock in his left boot.

Of course, each time he’d asked Dori to stop so that he could check, he never found the thing. He upended the boot at least twice, and still no joy.

It didn’t help that his stomach was churning from a disastrous combination of too little food that morning, too little sleep from the night before, and the uncomfortable feeling that he was forgetting something. He hadn’t been able to figure out what it possibly could be when he and Dori had left at daybreak. Ori knew how silly it was to keep worrying about it well after they’d lost sight of the mountain, but he still hadn’t been able to shake off the feeling.

All in all, it wasn’t a very promising start to this quest. 

“How much further is the inn?” Ori asked, shifting his backpack to try to ease the load a little. He’d been used to carrying heavy tomes to and from the library for Balin when he was an apprentice, but he’d carried that weight in his arms, not on both shoulders for hours on end.

“Not too much more,” Dori said, sounding irritatingly cheerful, even though he was carrying more than Ori was. Ori was sure he was _speeding up_ as he spoke, the annoying git. “We should be getting there close to noon or sundown, I should think.”

It was evidence of how tired Ori was that it took a moment for what his brother said to register. “Noon _or_ sundown?”

“Either or, yes,” Dori replied. “Which is why we should have more walking, less talking. Come on, then. Keep up!”

Ori stared at his eldest brother, and groaned loudly before hiking his backpack up a little further on his back, and hurrying after him.

***

Against the brilliant reds and oranges of sunset, Ori could see a signpost some distance away, with a shadow leaning against it.

It must have been a dwarf, because as soon as it moved, there was the silhouette of a nose in profile, along with the bumps of a braided beard. Ori wondered if it was one of the others who’d be joining them -- and then there was a flash of a guilder, flipping end over end until a dark hand swiped it out of the air.

Ori’s heart leaped into his throat, memories of when he was a dwarfling suddenly as clear as if they’d happened yesterday. There was only one dwarf who used sleight of hand with a tarnished guilder in order to keep him occupied for more than five minutes while Dori was busy making dinner. At least, only one dwarf that Dori trusted to mind him while he was trying to find all the paper and ink he could lay his hands on.

Ori started to walk faster, before common sense reined him in, forcing him to slow down. Any dwarf could flip a coin between his fingers -- it was possible that it was one of the dwarves who was going to join their company. Fili and Kili had said that there were bound to be volunteers coming with them who Ori had never met before. 

As he got closer, the dwarf turned towards him, revealing a very distinctive starburst hairstyle.

The pack Ori’d been carrying in his hands to give his shoulders a rest fell from nerveless fingers.

“Nori!”

It felt like the name was ripped from his throat as Ori ran, stumbling over rocks and the muddy track that served as a road. When he finally reached his brother, he launched himself into Nori’s arms, earning a surprised ‘oof’ and a grin that flashed in the growing darkness.

Nori let out a small huff of laughter, unlike his usual sly mirth, and hugged Ori back just as tightly. “Hey, hey. S’all right,” he murmured, patting his back like he wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do.

From such a close range, Ori could see that Nori hadn’t changed during the past few years. Smirking and cocky, even his painstaking braidwork in his hair seemed to have survived in the wild well enough. The dozens of small braids in his beard were tiny and neat; his eyebrows were still braided carefully into his hair. When he seemed to have recovered from Ori’s greeting, the smirk wavered into something warmer. “Wotcher, Ori?”

“Well,” Dori huffed, standing not too far away with his arms folded across his chest, his gaze disapproving. “I’m sure that Nidi will be glad to hear you aren’t dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Nori grinned obnoxiously at their eldest brother, though he was hugging Ori as if he couldn’t bear to let go. “If you’d made book on whether I’d survive in the woods on my own cooking, we could’ve made out like bandits.”

Dori snorted loudly.

Ori pulled back and squeezed Nori’s shoulders. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

Nori looked startled for a moment before he shrugged and ruffled Ori’s hair. “I am too.” Turning back to Dori, Ori could see him pulling an artfully woebegone expression. “What, no big hug, Dori? I’m hurt, I am.”

Dori stomped over and huffed again. “And what makes you think I’d let you anywhere near my coin purse?”

Ori was close enough to see the flash of hurt on Nori’s face before he smirked again, waggling his braided eyebrows. “You’re just worried that I’ll pass it up because I know it’s empty.”

“What’re you doing here?” Ori asked quickly, trying to head off an argument that he could almost feel brewing like a thunderstorm.

Nori shrugged. “Got word about a certain quest.” At Ori’s startled look, he grinned. “And about a certain journeyman scribe who’s going along, ready to fight a dragon.” He poked Ori’s middle, like he did when Ori was a dwarfling.

Ori swatted at Nori’s hand, unable to hide the proud smile at the title. It had been seven years since he’d sailed through the examinations -- much to the astonished suspicion of the Ered Luin review board -- but it was still thrilling to hear himself referred to as such. “So, you’re going to take down the dragon with us?”

Dori grumbled, “More like he’ll stuff all the treasure hoard of Erebor down his trousers and make a run for it at the first sign of trouble.”

“Dori--” Ori objected, but stopped when Nori shook his head.

“Nah, Dori’s got the right of it,” Nori said with a brittle smile. “I read the terms of the contract that the old coot drew up. Not a bad bit of profit, assuming we all survive.”

Ori’s eyes widened, startled by the fact that Nori knew enough about the contract to give an opinion on it. In between his hesitation to join the quest, and his minor feud with Dori about it, he hadn’t had a chance to sign a contract to officially join the company. He’d been hoping to do so at the inn, since that was where the company was supposed to gather before setting out. “You’ve seen it?”

Nori raised an eyebrow at him, the braid quirking against his skin. “You haven’t?”

Ori opened his mouth to try to explain, but Dori shook his head. “As much as I’d love to continue discussing our _private business_ out where anyone can pass by,” Dori said archly, “we really should get settled.”

“Settled?” Ori asked. He looked around, trying to see through the shadows that had enveloped everything, and then looked back at Dori. “Where?”

“Over there,” Nori said, pushing off from the signpost. Ori thought for a moment that Nori had picked a direction at random, but then a door opened about fifty or so yards away, revealing a dwarf carrying a lantern. With the ease of long practice, the dwarf hung it from a hook bolted into the side of a building next to a sign with a stylized red boar on it.

Ori hadn’t noticed it at first in the lengthening shadows of sunset, but as they made their way, he could see that what had been a large shadow sported windows, through which firelight could be seen.

Once upon a time, the Red Boar Inn had been a manor house for a nob who liked his privacy, Nori explained offhandedly. Nestled in a wilderness that had long since been beaten into a semi-flat plain with three dirt roads that were nearly mud, the inn seemed a convenient way station for travelers coming to and from the mountains. The stables were close to the front of the inn, boasting what looked like nearly a platoon of ponies of various sizes and colors.

When the explanation quickly devolved into an argument about Nori’s possible smuggling activities conducted outside of Ered Luin, Ori rolled his eyes and wandered back to the signpost until his brothers were finished griping at each other.

In the strong light of the lantern, Ori could see that the signpost that Nori had been leaning against at the crossroads was crude, but serviceable; three boards of varying degrees of decay were nailed to it, pointing haphazardly to “Ered Luin”, “Mithlond”, and “Hobbiton”.

“Ori!” Dori called from the doorway. “Come inside before you catch cold!”

“Are you two finished arguing?” Ori asked mildly.

“Never you mind,” Dori said firmly. “Inside with you, now. Come on!”

Rolling his eyes, Ori hurried to get inside.

When he reached the threshold, Ori’s stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch. It had taken years to get over the surge of panic he’d felt whenever he tried to walk into a pub, but there were still times when he’d feel a bit sick, especially if he’d never been there before. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a few deep breaths as he tried to will down the panic.

Dori and Nori were here. They weren’t going to let anything happen to him. The rest of the company was there too, and if everyone was eating supper, then Ori could move his food around his plate and then scrape it onto Fili’s or Kili’s plate. As long as he kept his wits about him, he’d be just fine. Bolstered by the thought, Ori walked in.

The inside of the inn was packed with dwarf-filled tables, and the ruddy glow of firelight from numerous iron chandeliers and fireplaces. Columns were spaced throughout the room at regular intervals, holding up a ceiling that looked almost bowed under its own weight. The bar along the back wall was filled with liquor bottles and customers, and the noise was such that Ori wasn’t sure if he’d be able to hear himself think. Seeing the tables of dwarves laughing, talking, jeering, Ori felt his throat getting tight when he couldn’t spot Dori right away--

Ori squeezed his eyes shut, and forced himself to take slow, deep breaths.

When he opened his eyes again, Dori’s waving hand caught his attention from the far corner of the room. Ori made his way through the crowd, murmuring apologies as he went, and noticed that the company gathered together for their journey had taken up residence at a few round tables clustered near one of the fireplaces near a corner of the room. A knot of panic that he hadn’t realized was still present loosened in his chest as he made his way over to Dori.

“There you are,” Dori said, reaching out when Ori got into range and half-dragging him over to sit down. “Sit, sit. We’ve still some time yet.”

Ori sat down, belatedly discovering that Dori’s table hadn’t been unoccupied. He nodded quickly to Balin and Oin. “Good evening, Master Oin,” he said, making sure to raise his voice so that Oin could hear. “Master Balin.”

Balin smiled, nodding back graciously. “Hello, lad. Can’t say that I’m surprised to see you here, though I’d thought you were coming alone?”

Dori sat down, looking offended. “Absolutely not. I’m not about to let him face down a dragon on his own.”

Balin held up a hand. “Of course not. You’re a fine brother, and you’d never let the lad come to harm, if you can help it,” he said soothingly. “We’re glad to have all the hands we can get, really.”

Ori frowned. “Why? What’s wrong? I thought Fili and Kili said that there were going to be a lot of volunteers?”

Balin snorted. “Remember the source of your information. About the only volunteers we’ve had are the gentlemen there.” He turned to look over his shoulder at another table, closer to the corner.

There were three dwarves that Ori didn’t recognize -- a large dwarf with a ginger braided loop for a beard; one with an odd cap that looked more at home with the loggers that came through Ered Luin from the south; and one sporting the remnants of an axe embedded in one side of his forehead, along with black and white braids that made Ori think of a mottled pony that he had once seen some years back.

“Only three?” Ori turned back to Balin, still a bit disappointed by how few there were. “How many does that bring the company up to now?”

Dori squinted at their set of tables, counting under his breath before he grumbled, “Looks like nine so far. Ten, counting Thorin.” He glanced up to find a harried-looking dwarf with a large platter in their arms, offering him a tankard. “Ah, thank you-- That’s not comforting, Master Balin.”

Balin grunted. “We’ve got another three coming.” At Ori’s curious look, he added, “Fili and Kili aren’t here at the moment, but they should be arriving soon with--”

Ori felt a shiver run down his spine, and before he realized what he was doing, he was watching the door just in time to see three newcomers entering the common room. The trio were wearing hooded cloaks over armor, but the one bringing up the rear was noticeably taller. The two in the lead didn’t seem sure where to go, their hoods turning this way and that before they made a quick beeline for their corner. When they noticed Ori, they threw off their hoods and hurried over to him.

Fili and Kili swarmed Ori, yanking him out of his seat and giving him enthusiastic back-pats and shouted greetings. Given that the din hadn’t died down appreciably since Ori had come in, they weren’t out of place, though a few of the dwarves at the bar were glancing over at their group more often.

“Who’s that with you?” Ori managed when he got his breath back. His heart pounded in his chest for some reason, but not from the fond looks Fili and Kili were giving him, glad to see that he was safe and sound after only a few weeks apart. 

“You remember our old weapons master, Mister--” Kili began, just as the dwarf approached their group of tables and peeled off his hood.

Blue eyes shone in the firelight, taking him in at a glance. A full, black beard lay against his armor. Sheathed in holsters on the dwarf’s back were two battle axes, the shadows lengthening on the names engraved on their blades.

Ori’s mouth went dry as Dwalin stared at him.

“I remember,” he said weakly. His heart sounded like a team of smiths, hammering away. His palms felt uncomfortably sweaty.

One moment, Ori could feel panic intermingled with a sick sort of despair in his stomach; and the next, Ori was just plain irritated.

 _I’ve spent seventeen years dealing with this,_ he scolded himself. _I refuse to give him the satisfaction of thinking I give a damn what he thinks anymore._

Angry at himself for how quickly he’d turned into a nervous dwarfling in Dwalin’s presence, he ignored the looks he got from Fili, Kili, and the others sitting at the table, and headed straight for the bar.

Halfway there, he belatedly remembered that he was just going to be wasting his money buying himself something to drink, but he forced himself to keep going. He’d only brought enough pocket money with him to buy or trade for a pony (Fili had told him it was a necessity for the journey), and after all the lessons that Dori had drilled into him about not carrying more money than he needed, Ori didn’t have a lot left over for anything else.

Feeling silly for doing it, but less silly than he would have turning around and going back empty-handed, he bellied up to the bar, and ordered himself a tankard of mead for appearance’s sake. With a flash of inspiration, he hastily corrected himself, ordering two more tankards and slapped three guilders on the counter. It had been a stupid idea, getting drinks for himself and Fili and Kili that he was going to have some trouble carrying, but if he was too busy worrying about spilling drinks, he would be able to buy himself some time before having to deal with Dwalin.

It took a bit of juggling, but soon, he’d gotten a fairly solid hold on the tankards, hugging them to his chest much like some of the larger tomes that Balin had sent him to fetch and carry in years past. Weaving through the crowd as gingerly as he could, and remembering how he’d navigated the market while similarly encumbered, he heaved a sigh of relief when he found he could hug one wall in a straight enough path back to their tables.

Two large hands reached into his field of vision and easily scooped two tankards out of his hands.

Ori squawked, unbalanced by the sudden “assistance” and equally offended that some stranger was going to try to steal mead that _someone_ in their company could enjoy. He started to say something, only to see that the hands in question sported thick, tattooed fingers, and were adorned with knuckle-dusters that were heavily scarred from use.

Ori’s gaze traveled from the hands, up the strong, wide chest, past the ruff of fur over battered armor, and up to blue eyes, which stared at him intently.

Ori wanted to shout or sneer -- anything that he could think of to wipe the beginnings of a smile off that lower lip that looked fuller and softer than it had any right to look. It hadn’t been five _bloody_ minutes, and his soulmate was already standing right in front of him, smiling at him as if he were some animal in a cage, put there for his amusement.

Well, if Captain Dwalin of the Watch was going to be a complete bastard to him, Ori was going to give him a piece of his mind. He would have to apologize later to Balin, of course, but the quest already promised to last for months, if not a full year, and he was going to be _damned_ if he had to suffer through--

“Your eyes are brown,” Dwalin murmured, his voice smooth and dark.

Ori felt like a candle that had been snuffed unexpectedly. The only thing that registered was that he had an uncomfortable feeling that he should recognize that sentence.

A moment later, he did.

He’d said the same thing to Dwalin when he spoke to Dwalin for the first time, when he first realized who Dwalin _was_ instead of speaking to him without ever seeing his face, or understanding his importance in Ori’s life.

Dwalin smiled at him, looking absolutely pleased with himself.

It would have felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on top of him, if Ori’s cheeks hadn’t been burning with anger and embarrassment. His soulmate was right in front of him, talking to him openly for the first time in seventeen years in front of an inn full of dwarves, and Dwalin was _mocking_ him.

“I’m aware of that, Captain, thank you,” Ori gritted out between clenched teeth. “If you would hand those back, I’ll take them to the table myself.” He nodded towards the tankards in Dwalin’s hands.

The smile dropped away suddenly, leaving behind a startled frown. It was possible that Dwalin hadn’t thought that he’d fight back, but given their previous interactions, the idea was ludicrous.

In a flicker of candlelight, Dwalin drew himself up, looking perfectly reasonable when he said, “You looked like you were having trouble.”

Ori almost wondered if he could break his own teeth with how hard he was clenching his jaw. Years of aggravation with Fili’s and Kili’s ‘brilliant ideas’ didn’t seem to have prepared him for meeting up with his soulmate again, apparently. “I’m perfectly capable of carrying three tankards of mead across a room, thank you.”

“If what you mean by ‘carrying’ is ‘dropping’ them, then aye, you looked like you were going to manage just fine,” Dwalin countered lightly, his tone almost teasing.

The thought that Dwalin assumed he was an uncoordinated dwarfling who was too proud to accept help carrying three measly tankards of mead had Ori biting back the foulest curses he’d ever heard Nori use. He’d carried things three times as unwieldy when he was an apprentice, and while he’d been a bit out of practice since he no longer had to fetch and carry for his master, it hadn’t meant that he was a complete butterfingers--

Ori forced himself to close his eyes, and breathe for a moment to keep a civil tongue in his head. Dori had raised him not to make a scene in public, especially not somewhere where drawing attention would cause more trouble than it was worth. And he was going to be damned if he was going to start screaming at his soulmate like a dwarfling throwing a tantrum. He wasn’t going to fall into that trap, no matter how tempting Dwalin made it for him.

When he opened them again, he saw Dwalin frowning at him.

“Since you’re so concerned with how clumsy I am, then you can give those to Fili and Kili yourself,” he snapped, his voice just loud enough to be heard over the din of the common room, but not loud enough to be considered a shout. “I think I hear Dori calling me.”

He turned on his heel away from Dwalin, knowing that if he looked at his soulmate for another moment, he was going to try to punch him in the face with his newly-freed hand, and Ori didn’t fancy hurting himself.

When he returned to the table while pointedly ignoring Dwalin’s presence, he carefully set the tankard in front of Balin, who looked pleasantly surprised at the gift, and then sat down in his chair as calmly as he could manage. 

Dori stared at him for an uncomfortably long moment before he turned to Balin with a smile. “Mister Balin, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be right back. There’s something I want to discuss with Ori.”

Before Ori could protest that, no, he didn’t want to discuss anything, he was sitting in perfect (if infuriated) silence and hadn’t been disturbing anyone else at the table, Dori had hoisted him up out of his chair with one strong hand, dragging him through the crowd to another corner of the room that gave the illusion of privacy better than their tables had, muttering ‘excuse mes’ and apologies to the dwarves he bumped along the way.

“All right, what happened?” Dori asked, not unkindly.

“Nothing,” Ori half-mumbled.

Dori snorted. “You look angry enough to stab someone in the eyes with dull quills, and then strangle them with bookbinding thread.”

Through the anger, Ori nearly smiled at the mental image, but as silly as it sounded, he wanted to _stay_ angry, so he shot Dori a sour look. “Bookbinding thread’s not that strong.”

“Still got you to smile, though.” Dori’s own smile slipped into a concerned frown. “Now, really, what’s wrong?”

Ori gritted his teeth, exhaling slowly through his nose. “Dwalin’s here.”

Dori’s expression darkened immediately. “What happened? Did he say anything to you?” His gaze swiveled from Ori back towards their group. He zeroed in on Dwalin, who had set the tankards of mead in front of Fili and Kili, and appeared to be fielding questions from them. If looks could kill, Ori fancied Dori’s would have.

“Yes,” Ori managed, gusting a sigh. “He brought up something from a long time ago that’s a bit embarrassing.”

Dori turned back to Ori, still glaring. “So, he’s mocking you now? Has he any sense of--”

“Wotcher, Dori?”

Ori jumped at the voice behind his shoulder, turning his head to see that Nori, with his hood up, had joined them in their quiet corner.

“Stop that,” Dori snapped. “It’s impolite to scare Ori out of his wits.”

Ori gave Dori a sour look, but Nori only snorted.

“It’s fine, though you’re starting to get some looks,” Nori said, waving a hand dismissively. “What’s going on?”

Dori opened his mouth, but then stopped himself and looked at Ori expectantly. “Do you want to tell him, or should I?”

Ori blinked at him, glancing at Nori and then back to Dori, not understanding.

Dori heaved a put-upon sigh. “Dwalin is Ori’s soulmate, and Dwalin’s been treating him poorly ever since Ori found out who he was.”

Nori stilled to the point where he could’ve been mistaken for a statue. After a long, uncomfortable moment, his expression thawed with a careless shrug. “Never would’ve figured Dwalin to go for the barely legal ones,” he tossed out. “When did they meet up? A week or two ago?”

Dori glared at Nori, looking ready to throw punches. “Try twenty years ago.”

“Seventeen,” Ori corrected with an embarrassed mumble.

Nori’s hazel eyes slid over to Ori, reminding him of a snake contemplating whether to strike. “He ever touch you?” he asked in a deceptively mild tone.

Ori frowned, trying to remember. He remembered how Dwalin had touched him during the rescue, and how Dwalin had held his wrists when Ori had been in the middle of a nightmare, but those hadn’t counted. Not the sinister way that Nori meant it, at least.

But other than those times...

“No.” Ori slowly shook his head in wonder, surprised that he’d never noticed before. “He just glared at me like I was something to be scraped off his shoe.” 

Nori’s gaze slid over to Dwalin, watching the hulking dwarf without blinking. “It’s a bad idea to do it now,” he said, just as mildly as before. “We need him for muscle on this quest, yeah?”

“What are you talking about?” Ori frowned, looking at Dwalin as if watching him from across the room could explain what Nori was talking about.

“Something he shouldn’t even be _thinking_ of doing,” Dori hissed, grabbing Nori’s arm and yanking him around to glare at him. “I didn’t come all this way to watch you do your dirty work in front of me. You’ll not get yourself in trouble over this, and you’ll _definitely_ not harm anyone who’s part of this company. Do you understand me?”

Nori sneered, yanking his arm from Dori’s grip. “So, what do you propose we do, _brother mine_? If you’re right, and Ori’s soulmates with the good Captain, that means we’re going to have to deal with him until Ori wises up and kicks him to the roadside. I’m not going to see my little brother tied to somebody who don’t respect him.”

Ori watched this exchange with a growing sense of irritation intermingled with something warm and cozy unfurling in his chest. “Excuse me,” he said pointedly, pleased when both of his brothers deigned to look at him. “But maybe you should ask me what _I_ want, seeing as how he’s my soulmate and all?”

Dori shot Nori a dark look before turning his disapproval on Ori. “Ori, you remember what he was like when he was in Ered Luin last. Orcs have better manners than he did, and you didn’t deserve a single bit of how he treated you.”

Ori sighed. “I know, Dori. But I’m not about to have you both threatening to make his legs bend the wrong way, or whatever else you have in mind for him.”

Nori snorted, folding his arms across his chest. “All right, then. What do you propose we do?”

When Ori couldn’t immediately think of a plan of attack, Dori and Nori traded a significant look. 

Propping his fists on his hips in frustration, Ori snapped, “I want you to leave him alone. No threats, no sharpening knives threateningly, no aggressive knitting--” At Dori’s outraged squawk, Ori jabbed a finger at him. “I mean it! Leave him alone! Just-- let me handle it.”

Dori folded his arms across his chest now, looking unimpressed. “I’ve seen the way you’ve handled it, Ori. Dwarves like Dwalin don’t learn without a concrete lesson.”

Ori sighed heavily, feeling tired and annoyed. “Please? Just let me handle this? If it gets to be too much, I’ll come to you, I promise. I just want a chance to deal with him myself without hiding behind your sk--” He stopped himself in time before he finished that sentence. Instead, he lamely corrected himself. “Behind the two of you.”

Nori let out a snort that said he knew exactly what Ori had meant. “The second he tries something with you, he’s getting a knife in his hand.”

Ori gave him a weak smile. “I appreciate the thought, but I mean it.”

“That’s not a thought; it’s a promise,” Nori said. “Now, if you two don’t mind, I’ve gotta make myself scarce. I wasn’t kidding about recognizing a few faces in here.” With that, he readjusted his hood so that all that could be clearly seen was his rich, red beard, and melted into the shadows.

Ori turned to Dori, giving him a stern look. “Are you going to leave Dwalin alone?”

Dori gave him a look of his own. “What I don’t understand is why you’re leaving yourself open to this. He was absolutely abominable to you, and he doesn’t deserve another chance to hurt you.”

“He’s not going to get one,” Ori said firmly. “Just because we’re on this quest doesn’t mean that I have to talk to him. I’ll follow Thorin’s orders as the leader of our company, but Dwalin’s not my master, or my family.”

“He’s your soulmate,” Dori muttered. “Which could be far worse.”

“Dori--”

Dori shook his head. “From what Mister Gloin tells me, we’re to stay here for the night in the rooms upstairs, and wait for someone named Gandalf to meet us here.” At Ori’s puzzled look, he shook his head. “I don’t know who he is myself, but I’m told that he’s going with us at least part of the way. From the way Balin was talking about him, you’d think he was just as vital as the pack ponies to bring along.”

Ori frowned. “Who could possibly be that important?”

Dori shook his head, looking faintly irritated. “I don’t know, but whoever he is, I hope he’s tolerable enough.” He clapped his hands together, and turned his full attention on Ori. “All right, now. Since you’re not hungry, let’s turn in. We don’t know how early this Gandalf fellow is going to arrive, and we don’t want to keep him waiting.”

***

Of course, that night, Ori couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t difficult to figure out why -- he hadn’t felt all that comfortable walking into the inn in the first place, and the thought of so many travelers quartering in other rooms meant that there were so many dwarves that Ori didn’t know nearby. He knew he’d been spoiled when he’d apprenticed with Balin -- the halls where Thorin and his family lived had been so empty compared to the rest of Ered Luin, and he’d gotten used to that emptiness.

Still, it wasn’t helping him now, and if he didn’t do something, he was going to be too tired to stand the next day, let alone make any notes in his journal.

Ori carefully unwrapped Dori’s arm from around him and slipped out of bed, pausing when Dori snorted in his sleep, but relaxing when he saw his brother wasn’t going to wake up from the disturbance. Sleeping with Dori had been a little embarrassing at first, but since they’d only had the one bed, and there were three of them, Nori had kipped on the floor. When Ori had still protested sharing a bed with Dori, both of his brothers had mentioned how they’d had to share a bed before their mother’s death, so really, it wasn’t as strange as Ori had thought.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

Ori jumped with a muffled cry, wheeling on the source of the voice. Nori was sitting on the ground, his back braced against the wall, aimed at the doorway, and appearing to be whittling something. Whatever it was still looked like a misshapen block, but Ori didn’t focus on that.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Ori whispered back.

Nori rolled his eyes. “I know that.” He nodded at Dori’s sleeping form. “You’re lucky he doesn’t sleep light.”

Ori glanced at Dori and sighed. “I think I’m going to go downstairs, clear my head a bit.”

“Get something to eat as well.” It sounded like Nori wasn’t sure whether to make it a question or an order.

Ori frowned. “I’m not hungry.” At that, his stomach protested.

Nori shot him an amused look. “Yeah, I hear that. Get something to eat while you’re down there. It’ll help you sleep.”

Ori wanted to protest that he was fine, but couldn't think of a way to do it without having to explain why he had trouble accepting food or drink from any tavern, let alone this one. He finally gave up with a sigh. “Fine. I’ll see if the owner has something left over.”

Nori nodded before settling back against the wall.

Ori frowned, confusion and suspicion creeping up on him. “You’re not coming with me?”

Nori snorted. “I’m not Dori. You’ll eat or you won’t.”

“Then why bother pestering me about it?” Ori asked, still confused.

Nori shrugged, keeping his eyes firmly on the misshapen block he was whittling. “S’what brothers’re supposed to do, isn’t it?”

The way that Nori’s accent slurred the word ‘isn’t’ reminded Ori of someone else with red hair and a haunted look in his eyes. “It’s what Dori does,” he murmured. “But you’re not that bad a brother yourself.”

Nori shot him a dark look. “Nice try. Go on down, if you’re getting something for yourself. Yell if you run into trouble.”

Ori nodded, stung by the harshness in Nori’s voice. “All right. Back in a bit.”

With that, he opened the door to the room, and headed out, easing the door shut behind him.

The stairs were only a little creaky as Ori carefully descended. When he got to the common room, he was startled by how large and empty it was. The fire in the fireplaces had been banked, some of the coals glowing a muted orange. The candles on the chandeliers had long since been snuffed. Moonlight shone through the windows, leaving pale squares on the wood floor and glinting off a few bottles that rested on the shelves behind the bar.

Ori felt a bit bad for lying to Nori about trying to find something to eat, but it passed quickly enough when he sat at the table near one of the fireplaces. He took advantage of a patch of moonlight that shone on the tabletop to pull out his journal.

He’d been halfway through describing the interior of the Red Boar when a bottle appeared in his peripheral vision, a large hand setting it down on the table with a firm thump, the knuckledusters clinking against the glass.

Ori jerked his head up, staring dumbly first at the bottle, and then at the owner of the hand. The dwarf’s face was shadowed, but Ori was positive that if the light were better, he’d see a crooked nose, a soft lower lip, and ice-blue eyes.

Dwalin stared at him before pulling the cork out of the bottle with one hand and pouring the liquid into two tankards easily. When he was finished, he pushed one over in front of Ori, and took a sip from his own.

Ori stared at the tankard in front of him, wondering what was in it before carefully setting his quill aside. He thought about drying the fresh ink on the page before putting the journal away, but decided against it. Given Dwalin’s habits, he was most likely going to make whatever snide remarks he wanted, and then disappear back to his room.

The longer Dwalin watched him, the more Ori’s shoulders tightened in anticipation.

There were a number of things that Dwalin could bring up, not least of which was Ori’s inclusion on the journey when Thorin’s call for any able-bodied dwarves to come with him to reclaim Erebor required that any volunteers be able to defend themselves. Given the state Dwalin had seen him in the last time they spoke to each other -- blind, helpless, and in the grips of a nightmare that left him terrified -- Dwalin probably had a few choice things to say on the matter.

Ori stared back, and when it was obvious that Dwalin wasn’t going to say anything, he sighed, annoyance snapping him roughly out of his spiralling thoughts. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Dwalin’s habit of hiding behind any kind of mask he could lay his hands on whenever he felt the need to talk to Ori, coupled with his need for Ori to speak first so that he could cut him to the quick, seemed as strong as ever. Perhaps the incident with his being “helpful” with the mead had been some sort of fluke.

“Good evening to you too,” he said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his tone.

Dwalin grunted, taking a sip of his drink. “Whiskey’s better drunk straight away.”

Ori scowled, very pointedly picking up the tankard Dwalin had poured him, and firmly set it back down in front of Dwalin. “Thank you, but I’m not thirsty.”

“You’ve not had anything to eat or drink all night,” Dwalin said.

There was a moment when Ori felt surprised at Dwalin’s perceptiveness, but irritation won out. He’d been aggressively mothered by a master growing up. Fili and Kili had certainly tried their best to be as inconveniently overprotective as possible as they’d grown older together, but nothing could have compared to Dori’s brand of parenting. Dwalin’s sudden interest in his well-being felt piss-poor and mocking in comparison.

“And I’m not going to,” Ori said firmly, his stomach churning at the idea of choking down whiskey. “If you’ll excuse me, Captain, I’ve finished my notes. Good night.”

With that, he eased his notebook closed, picked up his quill, and headed for the stairs without a backward glance.

It wasn’t until he stood in front of the door to the room he was sharing with his brothers that realization struck like a well-aimed mallet to his head.

He’d never lost the upper hand in that conversation.

Not once.

He hadn’t gotten angry, he hadn’t been scared. Oh, there had been waiting for Dwalin to make a move in the conversation, but when Dwalin didn’t go on the attack, Ori had been able to take control of the conversation to the end. He’d politely refused the drink instead of exploding. He’d got up without his legs shaking. His voice hadn’t even shaken once. There hadn’t been an ounce of fear in him from beginning to end.

With a small but triumphant smile, he opened the door to his room, and felt better about this journey already.


	2. Eriador

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Company meets Gandalf, and then sets out from the Red Boar Inn to the Shire.

“Excited, lad?”

Ori looked around, a bit startled to find someone addressing him directly. Everyone had risen early and assembled outside to check over their gear and wait for Gandalf and Thorin. Since the company had skipped breakfast in order to keep their appointment with the wizard and their leader, a number of them were muttering to themselves with a sleepy grumpiness that made Ori think of the stories of bears that Nori had told him when he was little.

When he found Balin watching him with fond amusement in his eyes, he tried without much success to hide his own smile.

“Sorry,” Ori half-mumbled, slipping his backpack off his shoulders and shifting the clothes inside around so that they would act as a better cushion against his back from the rest of the gear he was carrying. “I know I shouldn’t be. Just being on the road with Dori wasn’t all that interesting.”

“It’s something that’s usually glossed over in the sagas, aye,” Balin agreed dryly. “This is the first time you’ve been outside Ered Luin though, isn’t it?”

“Not exactly?” Ori said tentatively. “Dori says I was born on the road, but I don’t really remember anything before we got to the mountain.”

As silly as it was, Ori couldn’t help feeling a little embarrassed that he couldn’t remember much about the wandering days. He’d tried to learn more when he first heard about the years the Ereborian refugees spent traveling from town to town, barely surviving on trade and barter with Men before arriving at Ered Luin. But whenever he’d tried to ask his brothers, Dori refused to talk about it, and Nori’s face hardened into something blank and forbidding. It had been the first time that Ori had felt just a little separate from his brothers, because he didn’t remember like they did. Deep down, he wondered if he would ever be able to understand what it had been like.

Realizing that the silence had lingered just a little too long, Ori cleared his throat and asked, “What’s the country like that we’re going to be traveling through?”

Balin shrugged. “It’ll be grasslands as soon as we’re outside of the foothills, for the most part. We’ll have to cross the River Lune at some point, but the traveling should be smooth enough going.” He stroked his beard as he considered the sky to the east. “I don’t recall any inns between the mountains and Hobbiton, so you’ll have a chance to experience another part that they usually leave out of the legends.”

Ori frowned. “What’s that?”

“Camping,” Balin said dryly.

He was about to continue when there was a gentle cough, and the company as a whole turned to see Gandalf the Grey walking up the path towards them, leaning on a tall staff.

He was as tall as a Man, with a respectably long, grey beard, dressed in grey robes that looked worn around the edges, and his overall appearance wasn’t as impressive as Ori had been led to believe. He wasn’t sure _what_ he’d been expecting, but given that there were a few of the company who looked similarly unimpressed, Ori wasn’t alone in thinking wizards ought to be a bit more awe-inspiring.

The only truly notable thing about him, other than his size, was the penetrating quality of his blue eyes. Of course, since Ori had had some experience with penetrating, blue eyes, he hadn’t thought much of it at first. As the introductions began, however, it was difficult to ignore the way that Gandalf’s attention would focus on some of them, as though he were trying to figure out some sort of puzzle.

Ori was one of the first to be on the end of that stare, purely by dint of proximity, when he bowed and gave his name. At first, he’d thought that it was just a wizard’s habit to maintain eye contact for an awkwardly long time, but Gandalf didn’t spend nearly as much time assessing Fili or Kili, who were introduced next. Dwalin was also favored with a long look, which he returned just as balefully as he’d returned any of Ori’s glances nearly two decades before. What was surprising, though, were measuring looks given to Balin and two of the volunteers -- the one with the axe in his forehead, and the one wearing the logger’s cap, leaning on a battered mattock. Ori heard their names during the introductions, but it happened so quickly that he had trouble remembering who was who.

“Now that introductions are out of the way,” Gandalf said with a nod directed to the twelve of them, “we can make our way into the Shire to pick up the fourteenth member of our company.”

All of them traded looks. The dwarves who weren’t instantly suspicious of the wizard taking command of their company looked very confused. Ori could see Kili counting everyone under his breath, using his fingers to keep track, before shooting Gandalf an offended look.

“What do you mean?” Dwalin growled, shifting his feet so he wasn’t leaning all of his weight on his war hammer.

Gandalf nodded to him, completely unruffled. “Exactly as I said, Master Dwalin. I’m not sure where Thorin is at present, but if this quest is to be successful, you’re going to need a burglar with you, and I know just the person.”

Balin cleared his throat, stepping forward to draw attention to himself. “I think what Dwalin means is that, counting yourself, we already number fourteen.”

For the first time since he arrived, Gandalf looked startled. “Me? No, no, my dear fellow, I won’t be going with you on this quest. At least, not the entire length of it. When I spoke with Thorin some months ago, he told me of the route he was taking to reach the mountain, and since our paths coincide, I offered to come along for at least part of the trip. As such, you will need a fourteenth member to avoid an unlucky number, and since your fourteenth member lives in the Shire, we shall have to fetch him.”

Ori had to stop himself from shooting Gandalf an annoyed look. 

“Where in the Shire does he live?” Gloin demanded.

“In Hobbiton, actually,” Gandalf replied with a smile. “His home is not far from the Great East Road, and I’m sure that he would be willing to host all of you fine fellows for an evening.”

Gloin’s expression became less pinched, and there were slow, grudging nods through the group.

Dori, who had been watching the proceedings while standing next to Ori, reached out a hand to touch Balin’s sleeve. “Does Thorin know to meet us there? Wouldn’t we lose time waiting for him to catch up with us?”

Balin shot a glance at his brother, who grunted and headed inside.

Ori blinked, watching Dwalin as the door closed behind him. “What’s he doing?” he asked faintly.

“Renting a messenger raven, most likely,” Nori said, shrugging off his backpack and idly cracking his knuckles. “Should get to Thorin in a few days, I think.”

He raised an eyebrow at Balin, who nodded.

“Aye, that it will.” Balin turned to Ori. “His business is likely to finish in a few days, and if the weather holds, he might even beat us there.”

Ori frowned, trying to remember the one map that he’d had a chance to glance over before he and Dori had headed out to the Red Boar. “Is he coming from somewhere south of us?”

Dori aimed a quelling look at him before glancing at Gandalf in explanation. “Wherever he’s coming from, I’m sure that he’ll catch up in no time,” he said firmly, his voice just a little too loud.

If Gandalf noticed the conversational snub, he didn’t say anything. “Is everyone ready to leave, then?” He frowned, and then started counting heads, muttering under his breath as he did so.

Ori turned back to the inn’s entrance to see Dwalin emerge, murmuring gently to a large raven on his forearm in Khuzdul. After stroking its feathers with a gentleness that surprised Ori, Dwalin held his arm up and the raven flew off, heading northwest.

“Ah, good.” Gandalf smiled. “Are we ready to depart?”

There were twelve nods, conveying varying degrees of skepticism or unease, and then they started down the muddy track, following the signpost arrow pointing towards Hobbiton.

***

Despite the less than smooth start, Ori traveled along with the company more happily than some of the older dwarves, buoyed by the excitement of traveling somewhere he’d never been before. When the foothills flattened out into grasslands, Ori found himself thinking that the patches of wildflowers resembled designs on ornately-woven green carpets. He felt a slight pang as the Blue Mountains grew smaller and smaller behind them, but it quickly paled in comparison to the thought of the entire journey ahead of them. If nothing else, there would be other mountains to see, so it wasn’t like he was leaving them forever.

As the company traveled, Ori slowly got to know others in the company. Ori already knew the Line of Durin -- some better than others, admittedly -- and he found himself gravitating toward the dwarves he was familiar with. If he happened to keep as much distance between himself and Dwalin as their traveling party would allow, well, that was his own business.

As for the three volunteers, Ered Luin natives had always seemed like a rough, standoffish bunch when he was growing up, and from the way the large one with the ginger loop for a beard and the one with the axe blade stuck in his head never spoke, it was difficult to think otherwise. The one with the logger’s cap seemed to be the only one who spoke with any amount of regularity, and when he got going, he seemed to have trouble shutting up. He would explode into good-natured laughter at the slightest provocation and he seemed to say whatever was on his mind, but he seemed nice enough, despite all of that.

Gandalf kept largely to himself, answering questions genially enough, but always giving the impression that he was busy thinking of other matters. Every once in a while, he would glance at the company, his lips moving silently before he would nod and return his attention to the road ahead of them. It wasn’t as well-maintained as the Great East Road, Gloin had told him at one point when Ori complained about slipping in the mud, but it was better than nothing.

The going seemed especially slow since they had to wait until they’d reached the Shire to get ponies; there hadn’t been any traders at the Red Boar to bargain with, and, according to Gandalf, paying for even a single evening of stabling in the Shire might cut into their pockets more than they bargained for.

Without thirteen animals (well, more, really, because they’d need a few extra to carry supplies), in addition to thirteen dwarves, to worry about, at least the camping was easier.

Preparing to camp for the evening quickly became routine. Either Oin or Gloin would start a fire, and in Thorin’s absence, Balin would assign duties as necessary. More often than not, Dwalin was given guard duty -- though what there was to guard against in this wilderness, Ori wasn’t sure -- with Fili and Kili keeping him company in alternating shifts. The large, ginger-bearded volunteer (Bombur, the younger brother of the spokesman for their little group, Bofur) took over cooking duties when it was discovered that he could salvage a stew that Dori had burned on their first night under the stars. Balin had said that their supplies were enough to keep them fed for a few weeks, but Nori still slipped away when night fell. Sometimes, he would return with a few tiny squirrels, or a rabbit or two, but most of the time, he came back empty-handed and looking annoyed.

“There’s a reason I stuck to the mountains,” he grumbled under his breath after one unsuccessful try about a week after they’d left the inn. “Them and the woods. There’s better eating there.”

The last volunteer, the one with the axe in his forehead, nodded and said in a more poetic version of Khuzdul that Ori hadn’t encountered since his apprenticeship, “In these grasses, finding squirrels or rabbits is lucky, methinks. We have ventured too far from the logging camps to contend with wild boar, and long hath it been since I gazed upon deer of any stripe. If we travel through any wooded lands, our hunt is like to be more successful.”

Nori didn’t look entirely convinced, but seemed to have let it slide.

For a moment, Ori thought his brother’s peeved expression was worse than not being able to find anything better than squirrels and rabbits warranted, but when Nori noticed him looking, he gave a small shake of his head, smiling faintly.

The silence had gone on for just a little too long, so Ori turned to look at the volunteer, trying to remember his name. “You hunt?” he asked politely.

“Oh, aye,” Bofur piped up from his seat near the fire, turning an unfinished block of wood over and over in one hand without looking at it. “Bifur’s spear’s not for show, y’know.”

Ori had asked the question to break the silence, but found himself getting curious. A large spear like the one Bifur carried wasn’t one that he was used to seeing around Ered Luin -- most of the dwarves there tended to favor swords and axes for weapons, if not whatever tool was at hand. He wanted to ask if Bifur had been trained by his parents, as Dori had been with his flail, but when he looked at Bifur, the older dwarf nodded once quietly, his eyes starting to unfocus.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ori could see Bofur straighten from a comfortable slouch, his attention on Bifur a bit sharper than before.

Before anything else could happen, Bombur announced, “Stew’s ready!” and the sudden tension deflated.

As Ori got up to go get something to eat, he turned to Bofur. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean--” He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, but he had a feeling he needed to.

Bofur shook his head with a smile, walking with him toward the stew pot that Bombur was guarding with a large soup ladle. “Nah, it’s fine. Bifur goes away like that sometimes. He’s done it ever since he got the--” He tapped the brim of his hat illustratively.

“Oh!” Ori interrupted, nodding quickly and holding up a hand to stop any further explanation. He’d heard of war veterans who came back with wounds that didn’t heal properly. Evidently, Bifur had been one of them. “And that’s why he doesn’t speak in the common tongue? I know that Gloin and the others were bothered he was speaking it in front of Gandalf.”

Bofur nodded, smiling again. “Just so.” He glanced over his shoulder, and then nodded to himself before grabbing two bowls and holding one of them out for Bombur to fill. “I hadn’t thought that asking about the spear would send him back, but--” He shrugged. “I’ll remember it for next time, I suppose.”

Ori nodded as well. “Is there anything else I should avoid asking about?”

Bofur shrugged. “It’s hard to tell what’ll set him off. I figure if you see that look in his eyes where he’s going somewhere else, just let him be. It’ll take some time, but he’ll come back.”

Ori glanced over his shoulder, where Bifur was still staring into the fire as though the rest of the world didn’t exist, and wondered if anyone would’ve been able to reach him.

***

Once upon a time, Ori had a reasonably comfortable existence where he didn’t lug around two full buckets of water over ridiculous distances so that a company of twelve dwarves and one wizard could have thin rabbit stew for the fifth evening in a row.

The worst manual labor that Ori had ever had to suffer through while under Balin’s tutelage had been carrying stacks of books back to the library, and those had been much easier to maneuver than buckets of water. Everything else had been fetching the tea service from the kitchens, making sure the plate of cookies had a variety to choose from, and remembering that Balin took one sugar and no cream in his tea.

No, if Ori was being honest with himself, what was truly the worst manual labor that he’d ever had to suffer through in his entire life had been writing his first romance novel.

After he’d passed his journeyman exams -- much to the skepticism and consternation of the primarily-native review board -- he’d been able to find work, but not enough to rent a place of his own. Dori had welcomed him back home with open arms, of course, but he’d also been elbow-deep in trying to keep his restaurant open and making sure that Nidi stayed out of trouble, so the three of them had lived together, but it had been a tense time for everyone involved.

Remembering what Balin had told him about copying romance novels all those years ago, Ori figured that if copying novels had brought in extra income, writing them might bring in more, and be less painful for his hands. As such, he steeled his soul against the sin he was about to commit, and wrote his first romance novel. Well, he tried to, at least.

Two chapters into a travesty that rivaled the ones Balin had had him copy while he was an apprentice, Ori’s sense of literary decency had won out and he couldn’t write down another word. He’d emerged from the attic above their small apartment in the dead of night with the offending pages, and ritually burned them in two different fireplaces the next day. 

Ori stared at a blank sheet of parchment for two consecutive nights before he had gotten so fed up that he wrote what was probably the most belligerent romance novel in the history of dwarvish literature. With that out of his system, he figured he could try to write something more along the line of what those sorts of readers actually _wanted_ , but he couldn’t help talking to a publisher to see if his first effort might sell.

The Impossible Vow became an overnight success.

So, trying to ignore the feeling that he’d sullied himself by writing about grown dwarves acting like ninnies, declaring that they couldn’t be together for the stupidest reasons, Ori wrote four more novels.

“‘The first time that Tyban soulspoke, he glared at the block of wood in his hand, shaped into a dwarf with a grizzled face and a comely beard, sighed heavily, and made arrangements to break off his betrothal to Queen Zaharis of the Blacklock clan.’”

Ori winced, the full buckets of water banging against the side of his much-abused legs, and wishing that he couldn’t remember _that_ line as clearly as he did.

The Lovers’ Quandary had been his third novel, and even six years after publication, the opening sentence still gave him fits whenever he thought about it. As much as his publisher had tried to reassure him that it was fine, and introduced the conflict well enough, he couldn’t help feeling like he should have started the novel with the dialogue between Tyban and his betrothed, like he’d originally thought about doing.

The chorus of laughter that followed brought Ori up short.

He hadn’t imagined it; someone had read that sentence _out loud_.

He hurried back to camp as quickly as the weight of the water buckets would allow, discovering that most of the company -- with the exception of Dwalin, thank Mahal -- was clustered around the fire. Kili, the culprit, was grinning and still reading out loud.

Ori stared at him for a long moment in complete astonishment before he blurted out, “Since when did you start reading those horrible things?”

Kili jumped, looking for all the world like he was a dwarfling with his hand caught in a cookie jar. “Since they started getting good,” he said, sounding wounded. “Besides, didn’t you say that we should read more anyway?”

“Not that drivel,” Ori said with a groan, both from the idea of Kili reading romances voluntarily and that Kili was reading one of the romances he’d _written_. He hoped that it was dark enough that his blush would be hidden in the firelight. Remembering the two buckets of water in his hands, he carried them over to Bombur, who gave him a small nod in thanks.

“What’s his problem?” Oin asked his brother in a mutter that was probably supposed to be quieter than it actually was.

Balin, who’d been watching the exchange between Ori and Kili with some amusement, grinned and said, “Don’t mind Ori. He’s never had a liking for romances, ever since he was an apprentice.”

Dori blinked, shooting Ori a curious look. “Really? You seemed to like them well enough when you were a baby.”

At this unexpected bit of childhood embarrassment, the rest of the company exploded into laughter.

Ori groaned loudly and wiped his face slowly with both hands. Well, as usual, he hadn’t had to worry about finding a reason to blush when Dori was around.

“It seems that young Master Ori’s literary tastes have changed over the years,” Balin said, still chuckling. “I recall you objecting quite loudly over the idea of copying a few of them for me while you were an apprentice.”

“And for good reason,” Ori grumbled, sitting down near the fire and holding out his hands to warm them. “Those things are absolutely horrid.”

“This one’s not,” Kili said, holding up the cover of the book so that Ori could see the knotwork stamp across the front. “It’s about a toymaker who’s in love with the--”

“Queen of the Blacklock clan?” Ori cut in before he could stop himself. When Kili looked surprised, he sighed heavily. “You just read it out loud.”

“Well, yeah, but the betrothal bit’s a bit misleading,” Kili said with the air of someone who knew what he was talking about. Ori wasn’t sure whether to be touched that Kili liked the book, or checking him over for head wounds. “Tyban had courted her and everything, and he’d only _just_ convinced her to marry him…”

Ori had to set his jaw to keep from correcting the details that Kili was getting wrong as he continued with his summary. Tyban the toymaker’s soulmate had been a carpenter, not a soldier, and the reason that Tyban and the carpenter hadn’t gotten together in the end was because the carpenter favored dwarrowdams and needed to marry one so that he could continue his family business as per the wishes of his dying grandmother. The most important part of the entire story had been that Tyban and his soulmate were perfectly happy with the arrangement.

Ori remembered the storyline particularly well, because it had been the first time that he’d let himself think about Dwalin while he was writing. Sometimes, especially when he was writing exchanges between Tyban and his soulmate, Ori would wonder what would’ve happened if things had been different between himself and Dwalin. He hadn’t let himself do it before, because he hadn’t wanted the books to turn into diatribes against soulmates in general. There had to be a pair of soulmates in all of Arda who’d had a happier time of it than his own disaster of a relationship, after all.

Judging from the argument that ensued while he was lost in his own thoughts about whether Tyban should’ve had a plural marriage or if Tyban had done right by his soulmate by marrying Zaharis, Ori had already started something of a small war over the romanticism of it, if the rest of the company was anything to go by.

“You all right?”

Ori looked up to find Fili looking down at him, curious and vaguely concerned in equal measure. “Hmm? Oh, just fine. I just-- as soon as Kili started in on the soulmate, I stopped paying attention to save my sanity.”

Fili half-smirked, easing himself down next to Ori and resting his arms on his knees. “He only ever gets this bad about Skriff’s work, if it’s any consolation.”

Ori winced at his own pen name. In all the years since he’d published his first novel, he’d never really liked it, but he hadn’t thought of a better one. “‘Skriff’? Even the pen name is awful.”

Fili snorted in amusement. “Well, they’re not all that great, but this Skriff’s written some really good stuff.”

“Not you too,” Ori groaned, unable to stop a small smile.

Fili shrugged. “When there’s something that Kili can’t shut up about, I have to see for myself if it’s really as good as he says it is.”

“Isn’t that how you ended up washing dishes for a week at Dori’s restaurant? Because you tried to steal the recipe for his egg salad soup?”

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about that again,” Fili grumbled.

Ori smiled. “ _You_ said we weren’t. I don’t remember making any such promise.”

Fili groaned. “Can we please not talk about it anymore? I promise not to bring up the time that you and that Onar tried to prank Mistress--”

“Oh, but Dori told me about how excellent a dishwasher you were,” Ori said with a grin he couldn’t hide. He was about to add a bit more about how adorable Fili must have looked covered in soap suds when he felt a slight shiver run down his spine.

“Are you cold?” Fili asked with a frown.

“What?” Ori frowned back before he realized that Fili must’ve noticed. “Oh, no, I’m all right.” He was still wondering why he had shivered when a movement caught his eye, and then Dwalin came stomping up to the campfire, standing on the other side of where Ori and Fili were sitting. 

“What’s all the noise about?” Dwalin demanded, looking around at the company with a fierce frown. If Ori didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought the furs that Dwalin wore were visibly bristling.

“Kili’s brought a romance novel,” Bofur offered, causing Kili to squawk a weak denial.

Dwalin snorted at this, glancing over at Ori and narrowing his eyes.

This was familiar territory, at least. Ori shot his soulmate a sour look that said he was clearly not responsible for what Kili was up to. As depressing as it was, it was nice to have some semblance of normalcy from Dwalin, even though they were on a quest to reclaim a lost dwarven kingdom from a dragon.

Dwalin looked away after a moment, turning his attention on Kili. “I’m sure you can rip yourself away from yet another tale of grown dwarves making calf eyes at each other to take over the watch.”

Ori had to stop himself from snorting with some effort. It was a shame that Dwalin disliked him so much -- he had a feeling that if they weren’t soulmates, they might share similar opinions on romances complicated by sheer stupidity. Perhaps not close friends, but at least nodding acquaintances.

As Kili got up and handed the novel over to Gloin, who swore he would take the best care of it, Ori turned back to Fili, who was frowning at Dwalin.

“Fili?” Ori asked tentatively, not sure if he should probe into the dark look or not.

“Hmm?” Fili turned back to him reluctantly and scowled. “Did you and Mister Dwalin get into an argument?”

Ori snorted. “I don’t think he likes me very much.” He watched as Dwalin headed over to the stewpot and got himself a bowl before he turned to speak to Nori in low tones at the very edge of the light from the campfire. Inspired by the sight, he added, “Maybe it’s because I’m Nori’s little brother.”

Fili frowned. “Why would he not like you because of that?”

Ori shrugged. “From what Mister Balin told me, he was always chasing Nori all over Ered Luin.”

“What about when we rescued you?” Fili asked, confused. “He was right there along with us and your brother.”

Ori shook his head. “He was duty-bound. I was his older brother’s apprentice, and I’m guessing that since Mister Balin couldn’t come, he asked Dwalin to in his stead.”

Fili hummed a bit doubtfully at this, turning his attention back to Dwalin and Nori. Nori was looking out into the night, while Dwalin stood with his arms folded across his chest, frowning. “Doesn’t look like they hate each other now, though.”

Ori shrugged again, rubbing his hands together. “Dwalin’s not on the Watch anymore, is he? So, he doesn’t have to worry about taking him in?”

Fili turned and gave him a long look before he shrugged. “Fair point.”

Dwalin turned to the pair of them before Fili could say anything else, and called, “Fili! Come here!”

Fili made a face before he got to his feet. “Duty calls.”

“Try not to let Duty push you around too much,” Ori said with a smile.

Fili grinned back before he turned and walked toward the pair, unconcerned.

Ori watched the three of them talking, but with Nori and Dwalin looking like they did before and Fili’s back to him, he couldn’t tell what they were talking about. With an annoyed sigh, Ori turned back to the fire, and kept warming his hands. If whatever they were talking about was important enough, Fili would tell him the next chance he got.

***

“Pardon me, Master Ori?”

Being addressed as a Master by someone who wasn’t Gandalf was enough to startle Ori into looking up from his journal where he’d been recording the day’s journey. Ever since he admitted to himself that the journey itself was going to be fairly uneventful (and even a little boring, when the novelty of hills, clouds, grass, and wildflowers wore off), he’d figured out a shorthand that could describe the weather, the number of miles they’d traveled that day, and how many meals they’d had. This last had been at Balin’s request as a way to double-check that the rations were stretching as far as they could go without causing discomfort.

The voice that had interrupted him belonged to Bofur, his furry logger’s cap just as jaunty as it had been when they’d left the Red Boar a few weeks ago.

Ori smiled. “Thank you for the compliment, but I’m still just a journeyman. Was there something you needed?” Since they’d started traveling together, Ori had noticed Bofur chatting with Nori and Fili and Kili about all sorts of things, but he hadn’t really spoken to the dwarf himself, and found himself wondering why he was being approached now.

Bofur glanced down at the journal in Ori’s hands. “What’re you working on, there?” he asked, his Ered Luin accent lilting enough to be almost musical. He sat himself down next to Ori with an easy grin.

A bit thrown off by suddenly having a companion, Ori said a bit awkwardly, “Oh, just writing down what happened today. It’s not really much.” He reflexively turned the journal to Bofur before remembering that he wasn’t an apprentice anymore, and the shorthand he’d used probably wouldn’t make sense to anyone but himself.

Bofur still looked at the journal curiously enough, his eyebrows lifting. Turning his attention to Ori himself, he said, “A journeyman scribe, you said?”

At Ori’s nod, Bofur grinned. “Then perhaps you might be able to help me with summat?” Before Ori could protest that he probably didn’t know as much as a master, Bofur had reached into a pocket and pulled out a small wooden block, only about the size of his palm, and offered it to Ori.

Ori put his quill away in his pocket before taking the block, not sure what he was supposed to do until he looked down at it and blinked. “Oh, it’s a tiny book!”

The book had been carved as though it were open to the exact middle, with all the parts of it exquisitely-detailed -- the lettering on both pages, the delicate ‘stamp’ on the front cover, the tiny ridges where the book had been ‘sewn’ together. The cover even felt like leather to the touch.

“This is amazing,” Ori breathed, almost afraid to touch the miniature lettering on the pages, for fear of smudging ink that wasn’t really ink. He glanced up at Bofur before returning his attention the wooden block.

"How long did it take you to do it?" Kili's voice asked, sounding only inches away from Ori's ear, and Ori jumped -- he'd been so focused on the remarkable little book that he'd evidently missed Fili and Kili coming back from patrolling around their campsite.

“Oh, I always lose track when I soulspeak,” Bofur said with a careless shrug. “Probably took an hour or two.”

Ori jerked his head up, eyes wide. He impatiently smacked Kili’s grasping hands before offering the tiny book back to Bofur. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize--”

“I’m the one who showed it to you, aren’t I?” Bofur chuckled. He leaned over to point at the pages of the book with a yellowed fingernail. “See, I don’t know what these say, and I was wondering if you’d know what they meant, or if you recognized what language it was supposed to be.”

Fili, who’d been sitting on Kili’s other side, looked confused as he leaned around his brother. “You can’t read?”

Bofur smiled politely, but with an edge to it. “I know letters enough to recognize them, but those look different.” He nodded to the carving in Ori’s hands.

Ori peered at the tiny pages, staring at the letters for a long moment before he reminded himself that he was supposed to figure out what they meant, not marvel at how beautifully they were rendered in miniature. “This looks like Tengwar,” he said slowly. “But the words don’t make any sense.”

“Are the letters too tiny?” Kili asked.

Ori shook his head. “No, I can read them just fine. It’s just that the letters are put together in a funny way. I wouldn’t even know how to begin pronouncing some of them.”

“Is it Elvish at all?” Bofur asked, frowning down at the tiny book.

“It’s not…” Ori began tentatively. “I’m not sure how to describe it, but I know it’s not Elvish.” He gave Kili a firm look that threatened to smack his hand again before offering the book back to Bofur. “I’m really sorry. I wish I could be more help.” Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Balin speaking with Gloin on the edge of the firelight, and a thought occurred to him. “You could try asking Mister Balin? He was my master when I was an apprentice. Maybe he might know what it says?”

Bofur’s eyebrows jumped up in surprise as he took the little book back. “Well, there’s a bit of luck there,” he said with a grin. “Thanks.” With that, he stood up and headed over to Balin.

Fili and Kili turned back to Ori. “Are you all right?”

Ori blinked a few times. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen someone else’s soulspeaking craft before.” He paused for a moment, not liking how awkward the phrase sounded. “Soulcraft?”

Fili shrugged, getting up from his spot and moving to sit closer to Ori. “It sounds as good as anything else I’ve heard.”

“Wait, you’ve never seen anyone else’s before?” Kili asked, surprised. “We’ve seen our uncle’s a time or two, when he hadn’t had a chance to put it away.”

Fili nodded. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen something that was a thing, instead of someone’s face.”

Kili frowned at his brother. “Uncle doesn’t soulspeak faces.”

Fili smacked him on the shoulder. “Oi, not so loud,” he muttered. “What anyone soulspeaks is their own business, after all.”

“Then why are you telling me about your uncle’s?” Ori asked in a low voice. “And what’s wrong with your uncle’s soulcraft?”

Fili shrugged. “As far as I can tell, he soulspeaks a face, but at the very end of it, he destroys it. You can’t even tell what the face is supposed to look like afterwards.”

Ori stared at him with wide eyes. “Why would he do that to his own work?” 

Even as he asked the question, part of him could guess the answer.

His relationship with Dwalin had never been easy. He’d kept the drawings he’d created when he soulspoke; first, because Dori recommended it. When any hope of a happily ever after had died, he kept them out of an instinct he couldn’t really describe. Each drawing was numbered, dated, and carefully bound into a book that he’d made himself with the money he’d gotten from selling The Impossible Vow. He’d mechanically added to it over the years, but he hadn’t thought about it until he’d started writing romance novels.

One night, Ori had stared his newest sketch of Dwalin in the eye and thought to himself how easy it would be to just rip it up into tiny pieces and burn them the following morning.

“I don’t think he does it intentionally,” Fili admitted, not seeming to notice how Ori had been lost in thought. “The one time I caught him soulspeaking at the forge, he was still under when he grabbed a chisel and slammed it right into the bust’s forehead.”

As if sensing Ori’s startled skepticism, Kili nodded quickly in agreement. “I remember that time. He was supposed to be working on a commission for some lord, but it happened right in the middle of it. He was cursing up a storm when he came out of it because he’d broken his good chisel.”

Fili and Kili only had one or two more anecdotes, but what scraps Ori learned of Thorin Oakenshield’s soulcraft were unexpected gifts. The research Ori had done over the years hadn’t examined the process or the results in any detail, so Ori’s only knowledge of soulspeaking came from what he’d been through himself. Balin had told him once about soulspeaking through calligraphy, but this had been the first time Ori had heard intimate details about a dwarf whose craft didn’t involve ink and parchment.

The soulmate romances Ori had written included dwarves of different professions, but he’d been able to get away with being as vague as possible. Judging from the reactions of the company around the campfire whenever Kili pulled out The Lover’s Quandary, the heated debates were about the relationships involved, not how the process had been described. 

Ori’s academic curiosity wasn’t enough to quell his guilt, though. After he’d discovered that he had a soulmate, the whole thing had felt so personal, so intimate, that he wouldn’t have wanted to discuss it in a book of scholarship, or even talk about it with Dori or Nori anymore than he had to. The act itself felt so private that he didn’t want anyone else to see him while he was under, and _his_ soul didn’t do anything as drastic as ripping the papers to shreds before he could even see what his soulmate’s face looked like.

He couldn’t imagine what Thorin must have felt, waking up from a trance to find himself staring at a broken ironwork, knowing that his own soul was responsible for damaging it so badly. If Thorin knew that Fili had seen him soulspeaking on top of that... Ori wasn’t sure what would’ve happened, but he wouldn’t have blamed Thorin if he’d wanted to hide somewhere for a few weeks, and not talk to anyone. The more Ori thought about it, the more he wanted to apologize to Thorin personally for hearing details about his soulcraft without asking him directly.

The fact that Bofur had approached him, a nearly perfect stranger, to ask about his own soulcraft felt very... odd.

Ori could feel the moment when the brothers started staring at him expectantly. With a loud sigh, he glared at the two of them. “For the thousandth time, no, I’m not going to tell you who my soulmate is.”

“It can’t be as bad as you think it is,” Fili murmured, his gaze earnest.

Kili nodded in agreement. “And if he’s still a stuck-up prick, we can beat him up for you.”

“Be still, my heart,” Ori muttered, rolling his eyes. “You’ve offered to do that before, and my answer’s still no.”

He wiped his face with one hand before turning away from the two of them toward the fire. Of course, that was the moment when Dwalin stepped into the range of the firelight, his eyes glittering, as his gaze swept around the camp. He paused for a moment when he saw Ori, but looked away after a moment too long, his gaze landing on Fili and Kili.

“So, this is where you two have been,” he grunted, glowering at the pair of them.

Kili jumped before shooting to his feet, looking abashed and surprised. “Mister Dwalin! I thought shift change wasn’t for an hour?”

Dwalin snorted, looking supremely unimpressed. “And leave you two to pick on the lad here?” He nodded curtly towards the edge of their camp. “Get on with you.”

Kili shuffled away as Dwalin directed, but Fili gave the older dwarf a hard look. “We’re not picking on Ori.”

Dwalin looked unconvinced, glancing at Ori for confirmation.

Ori gave him as hard a look as he could manage. He was dwarf enough to admit that there were butterflies in his stomach over how the firelight flickered over his soulmate’s strong features, highlighting his broken nose, the faint scar running through his right eyebrow, the dark beard gracing his cheeks and jawline, the impossible softness of his lower lip. As Dwalin folded his muscular arms across his chest, they flexed, power rippling through them.

Gritting his teeth and trying not to think about how those arms would feel wrapped around him, Ori said firmly, “We _are_ friends. They weren’t picking on me. And even if they were, I don’t need anyone to fight my battles for me, Captain.”

He could feel Fili’s confused look on him, but Ori kept his eyes on Dwalin, whose whole body went rigid with tension. They hadn’t directly spoken to each other since that night in the Red Boar, but apparently Dwalin had only been biding his time.

Well, Ori was ready for him. He wasn’t a silly little dwarfling anymore who would stammer and get nervous and not know what to say. He _still_ didn’t know what to say, but at least now, Ori would be able to stand his ground.

Jaw still set, Ori watched and dared him to say something, to sneer at him.

“So I see,” Dwalin growled. He turned to Fili and added, “Better hurry up. Who knows what trouble Kili will get into if he’s left by himself.”

Fili frowned at Dwalin before nodding slowly, one of his hands dropping to rest on a knife tucked into his belt. “Right.” He looked over at Ori and added, “If you want to talk some more, you know where we’ll be.”

Ori nodded. “I will, thank you.”

As Fili walked off into the night after Kili, Ori pulled out his journal from his pocket without looking at it, turning his gaze to Dwalin and daring him to say something else.

Dwalin looked like he was about to say something, but after a moment, he shook his head and looked sour, walking away from the fire towards Balin and Bofur, who were talking animatedly with each other.

Ori read over what he’d written so far with a smile, feeling a small thrill of victory.

***

According to Gandalf, hobbits were a friendly sort of people even with strangers, as long as you didn’t expect more than a nod in greeting.

Ori wasn’t sure what hobbits the wizard was talking about, as the hobbits they saw while they traveled on the Great East Road stared at them as if the company were going to make off with all of their silver. Some of them even squeaked and ran inside their houses, only to peer out at them from behind glass windows. There were a few who glared suspiciously, but nodded in greeting and didn’t speak a word as they leaned on gardening hoes and other farming tools rather menacingly.

With a frown, Ori turned to Nori and asked in a low murmur, “Is this… normal?”

Nori shrugged. “From what I know of ‘em, yeah. Hobbits have always been a little funny.”

The thought wasn’t comforting, especially since Gandalf had disappeared just after daybreak to go on ahead and “check on things”, whatever that meant. They hadn’t seen him since, though they had been lucky enough to find the Green Dragon Inn, a sprawling, above-ground structure that had sizable stables and plenty of ale. Finding space for all of the company had been a bit of a feat, but after the barman saw their money, they didn’t have any further problems. Their fellow customers, of course, gawked as much as the hobbits living on the outskirts did, but luckily, nothing came of it. Dwalin glared a bit, which caused most of the hobbits to find their ale cups or their table companions very interesting. After a gentle murmur from Balin, though, he stopped glaring quite so much.

It was nearly nightfall when Gandalf found them, looking for all the world like he’d planned their meeting from the start. “Ah, good, you’re all here. I was worried you were going to start wandering the countryside.”

“Seeing as how we didn’t know where you’d gone,” Dwalin growled, causing no fewer than three hobbits to stare at him in mute horror, “you’re lucky we didn’t--”

Balin, visibly checking a sigh, reached over and took his brother’s arm. At first glance, it was a firm, reassuring grip, but Ori could hear his soulmate give a soft grunt under the pressure.

Ori covered his mouth and cleared his throat to hide a smile.

“All right, everyone, we’ll adjourn outside,” Gandalf said in a voice that was soft, but still reached all of the dwarves easily. “And discuss our strategy from there.”

Ori found himself trading looks with Nori and Fili before he hesitantly got up from his chair and tucked it in reflexively.

Their bill paid, the dwarves assembled outside with no small amount of suspicion. 

“Now, everyone--” Gandalf stopped, counted under his breath while pointing at each of them, and then nodded to himself. “Yes, that’s everyone, good.”

“He keeps acting like we need a minder all the time,” Kili grumbled an aside to Fili.

“That’s because you _do_ ,” Fili grumbled back with a half-hearted shove.

At a quelling look from Dwalin, the two lapsed into silence after Kili shoved his brother back.

“All right, Gandalf,” Balin said in a firm but low voice. “What’s this strategy?”

“And why do we need one?” Dori demanded. “We’re just going to a hobbit’s house, aren’t we?”

“A smial, Master Dori. A house is above ground,” Gandalf corrected gently before turning to the rest of the group with a stern glint in his eye. “And we shall arrive in pairs.”

Nori, who’d worn an expression of slight amusement ever since they entered Hobbiton, frowned suddenly, making the resemblance between him and Dori unmistakable. His question, however, was mild in comparison. “Why pairs?”

“Mister Baggins is an excitable sort,” Gandalf said, and there was a moment when Ori thought that he was sharing a private joke with himself. “And the sight of so many dwarves on his doorstep might cause him some alarm.”

“Seeing the sort of welcome we’ve had here, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Fili murmured under his breath. “If we go in pairs, it’s likely to take all night, and the sun’s just going down.”

“The lad’s right,” Dwalin growled, folding his arms across his chest and looking up at Gandalf through his lowered eyebrows. “I’ll go and make sure everything’s on the up and up.”

Before anyone could object, Dwalin stomped off, heading in the direction that the wizard had come from. The wizard in question merely sighed.

Balin visibly checked a groan. “I’ll go to make sure he doesn’t give our host the fright of his life,” he said. Ori wondered if his old master used that long-suffering tone about Dwalin a lot when the two were younger.

Gandalf watched after Balin’s progress and nodded to himself. “Right, that’s the first two. And who’s next?”

“Us!” Kili stepped forward before anyone else could. Grabbing Fili’s sleeve and dragging him forward with an impatient, “c’mon, c’mon!”, he beamed up at Gandalf like a dwarfling wanting sweets. 

Fili took one look at his brother and rolled his eyes. Turning to Gandalf, he asked, “Well? Which way is it?”

“Up the tallest hill,” Gandalf said with a twinkle in his eye. “You’ll know it by the mark I left on the door.”

Kili looked like he was about to start asking questions about what sort of mark, but then Fili was dragging him off, and that left eight.

“All right, everyone,” Gandalf said, sounding for all the world like the minder Kili accused him of being, “I’ve already sent two too many on that first trip. Decide amongst yourselves who will go next, and we’ll proceed from there.”

“Why do we even have to wait in the first place?” Gloin demanded. “There’s no hiding the fact that there are twelve of us -- thirteen, if Thorin manages to catch up with us before we leave.” He folded his arms across his chest and scowled just as menacingly up at the wizard as Dwalin could have, if he were still there. “Better to get the shock over with, I say.”

Oin, who’d been listening with his trumpet firmly planted in his ear, nodded in agreement. “You have to remove the bandages at once if they’ve stuck to a wound, not tease them off inch by inch. The pain’s stronger, but over quicker.”

Ori couldn’t exactly fault their logic. He was also in favor of going sooner because even while the inn had been cozier than any he’d been in while in Ered Luin, he hadn’t been able to choke down anything, food or ale. Maybe his stomach would calm down when they got to this Baggins’ smial, and he’d be able to eat something, since it wasn’t a roadside inn or anything similar.

As Gandalf tried to convince the group that hobbits had a more delicate constitution than dwarves did, the dwarves were steadfast in their refusal to wait any longer. By that point, night had already fallen, and Ori found himself having trouble picking out finer details in the area around them. Telling himself not to worry about it, he let Dori prod him along until the entire group -- including Gandalf, who apparently saw no point in staying behind if eight dwarves wanted to show up on Mister Baggins’s doorstep unannounced -- was heading down a few dirt lanes, and finally up one looming shadow that was probably a very impressive hill in daylight.

The top of the hill sported a stone path, the stones light enough to provide a contrast to the dark of the grass a small mercy. There was a lantern lit right next to a circular, green door, and a very nice-looking front porch, complete with a long bench and a length of fine cord to the right of the door as a serviceable bell-pull. Gandalf unlatched the wooden gate easily, and ushered them forward.

“Now, as I said before, Mister Baggins is an excitable fellow, but not unkind. He’ll need some assistance with preparing for all of you, so go ahead and grab whatever chairs you can find and take them to the dining room. From there, you should grab whatever you wish from the pantry, and bring it to the table. Since Mister Baggins will be coming with us, and he lives alone, all of his food is likely to spoil before he returns.”

“Why not take it with us?” Gloin asked with a frown. Ori could almost hear the cogs turning from here, and he thought it was a fair question. Bringing food with them might require another pony to carry it, but if they had more food, they wouldn’t have to worry so much about going hungry if the game continued to be as scarce as it had been on their way from the Blue Mountains.

Gandalf shook his head. “Most of Mister Baggins’s larder is going to be perishable. They wouldn’t last a week on the road, sadly. You’re welcome to grab anything that you think might make the journey, but I daresay it’s not going to be much, since Bilbo wasn’t expecting my arrival this morning. Hobbits have a great love of food, and they know ways to preserve it for long stretches, but only if they’re given enough warning.”

Ori nodded slowly, remembering the times before Dori’s restaurant got off the ground when he would spend at least a day preparing food for the coming week.

Bofur was about to reach for the bell-pull when Gandalf cleared his throat.

“What now?” Nori groaned. “I’m starving!”

“Just one more thing before we go inside,” Gandalf said reassuringly. “If Mister Baggins starts to object or tell you to put things back, ignore him.”

Ori traded a startled look with Dori. “Whyever for?” he blurted out, looking at Gandalf over his shoulder.

“Because he made a promise that he would serve all of us, and along with being excitable, Mister Baggins is also regrettably forgetful sometimes. He’ll object, but just continue about your business, and leave the rest to me.”

Without waiting for any further instructions, Bofur pulled on the bell-pull. As they crowded closer to the door, eager to get inside, Ori heard someone shouting, though he couldn’t understand what they were saying.

Ori raised an eyebrow at the wizard, ready to ask why he neglected to mention that their host was so forgetful, but then the green door was yanked open, and they were tumbling inside with a collective yelp of surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank-you to everyone who's read and commented. I forgot to thank Kailthia for her inspiration in Chapter 1, and as always, a huge thank-you to my betas, who have had to deal with my freak-outs more than once during this chapter. I'm so sorry, and I swear I will make it up to you.
> 
> That being said, I finally hit the point of no return, and I had to post. If there are further mistakes, my deepest apologies for them. Blame me, not my betas.
> 
>  **ETA:** After receiving a comment for this chapter, I felt I needed to let people know that this isn't a Bagginshield fic. I should've said something sooner about it, and I'm sorry about that. If you got invested in the story thinking that Bagginshield was going to happen, I'm especially sorry, because I never meant to lead anyone on and then make it feel like a pairing fake-out.
> 
> If you're willing to give Boffins a shot and see what happens with Thorin, I'd love to have you on board.
> 
> Personally, I'd like to keep who Thorin's soulmate is a secret until Ori discovers it during the course of the story, but if anyone feels I should include it in the pairings tag before the story gets to that point, please let me know. If you just want to know yourself, feel free to hit me up on [my tumblr](http://leaper182.tumblr.com/ask). I have anon asks turned on, if you don't have a tumblr account.


	3. Bag End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The company meets their would-be fourteenth member, and there are some words exchanged over the course of the evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thanks to Penniform, Elsajeni, ForAllLove, and TheJerseyDevile for all their help and hard work. I know that it might not be entirely up to snuff, but I'm going to go ahead and post, and if it turns out that I need to change something later, at least AO3 comes equipped with an edit button!
> 
> As for the chapter structure itself, I'll be the first to admit that I didn't want people to have to scroll through Bag End since it's been done so many times before in fics, but I'm hoping that with it being from Ori's perspective, it won't be quite so boring?

Ori had no idea who had landed on top of him, but he hoped they would get off of him _very quickly_.

Thankfully, it wasn’t long before the press of bodies on top of him lightened considerably, and Dori yanked him to his feet.

“Are you all right?” Dori asked with a frown.

Ori nodded. “I’m fine.” He glanced around the front room curiously, noticing the wood paneling and curved arches of the room before he got a view of their host. 

Bilbo Baggins was a few inches shorter than Ori, wearing a thick, patchwork house robe tied off at the waist, his hair a mop of brown-blond curls. Dark eyes that could’ve been blue or brown stared at them with a mix of incredulity and horror, which only seemed to get worse as more dwarves introduced themselves, bowed, and headed inside without waiting for so much as a by-your-leave.

“Mister Baggins, please excuse my traveling companions,” Dori said, drawing himself up to his full height and bowing low. “They seem to think acting like Orcs is appropriate.”

Ori had trouble not smiling at his brother’s muttered aside.

Righting himself, Dori added, “I am Dori, at your service.” When Ori didn’t immediately follow suit, Dori nudged him in the side.

“Oh, sorry,” Ori said quickly with a bow. “Ori. At your service.”

“Ah, yes, well--” Bilbo began before a crash from further inside the house-- smial, rather -- had him dashing off in a panic.

Dori frowned disapprovingly, watching him go, before noticing a bit of lint on Ori’s cardigan. “You’d think he’d at least say something more than ‘yes, well’.”

“I wonder if Gandalf told him there was going to be twelve of us,” Ori replied, idly batting away Dori’s fingers from his cardigan.

“Nonsense!” Dori frowned. “As if he’d be _that_ rude to our host. It looks to me like Mister Baggins hasn’t hosted dwarves before, if he’s that worried about something crashing. Besides, whoever broke it would fix it better than new. C’mon, then. You set the table, and I’ll go see where Nori isn’t nicking any of the silverware.”

“He wouldn’t nick anything from Mister Baggins, would he?” Ori asked, a bit startled at the idea. He’d known for years that Nori had been a thief, but he hoped that his brother wouldn’t try to steal from someone who was allowing them to stay the night.

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t put it past him,” Dori said darkly.

***

For all that they were in a hobbit’s smial instead of back home in Ered Luin, Ori had to admit there were a startling number of similarities between setting up a large Durin’s Day dinner with Lady Dis and her family, and the spread that the company was busily preparing for the hobbit’s table.

Of course, Dis would’ve been directing everyone to put the cold cuts between the potatoes and vegetables instead of quietly moving the vegetables to one side. She certainly wouldn’t have been ordering everyone to “put that back” with varying levels of emphasis. But all in all, it was almost enough to make Ori think they were back in Lady Dis’ home in Ered Luin.

Ori was busy shuttling food from the hobbit’s well-stocked pantry to the table, so he didn’t hear all of their host’s objections, though he found it odd that there was something about ‘Grandpa Mungo’s chair, not for sitting on’-- if the hobbit was going to keep something in his home, why wouldn’t it be something he was going to use?

Shaking his head, Ori kept going, relinquishing a bowl of tomatoes the hobbit seemed dead-set on taking from him, and pausing briefly to set the places at the table before getting more food. Gandalf seemed to be taking yet another head count -- it was a wonder that the wizard remembered anything at all, if he had to keep double-checking how many dwarves were present. Finally, though, the table was loaded with food, the chairs were arranged so that everyone could sit at least somewhat comfortably, and everyone was talking loudly and grabbing everything with their hands instead of eating like civilized dwarves.

Glancing at the rest of the company, Ori had a feeling at least _some_ of the dwarves were hamming it up, enjoying the look of outrage on the hobbit’s face. The impromptu belching contest had been quite fun, he had to admit. Seeing the looks on the faces of the dwarves who hadn’t known him very well was a sight to see when he let out the deepest belch out of all of them, even outdoing Nori, who’d taught him how to do it in the first place. It would’ve gotten Fili and Kili a smack from their mother, and a disapproving look from Thorin, but it seemed that even Dori and Balin didn’t mind the lapse in manners.

Ori wondered if their host had done something especially galling, if Dori was willing to take the mickey out of him. But for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what Master Baggins had done to upset Dori so much.

All throughout dinner, of course, Dwalin didn’t look in his direction. Ori wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

***

“I don’t understand what they’re doing in my house!” Bilbo said in a strangled half-whisper, his arms jerking in restrained motions. Ori had heard that tone often enough from Dori whenever there were Watch members who had swarmed into the restaurant and seemed intent on eating everything that wasn’t nailed down or on fire; rather than a gracious host, Bilbo sounded like the panicked and indignant victim of an unforeseen invasion.

The more he saw of Bilbo Baggins, the more Ori wondered just what it was that Gandalf had told him about the Company.

“Excuse me,” Ori said, making sure he was loud enough to interrupt whatever the wizard was going to say in reply. “But what should I do with my plate?”

Bilbo looked like he was about to point him in the direction of the kitchen when Fili appeared from behind him and said, “Don’t worry, Ori, give it to me.” The wink made him look more roguish than usual.

And then, of course, that’s when Fili chucked the plate down the hall at Kili, who bounced it a few times on his elbows and the sides of his boots, and then tossed it into another room.

Bilbo started bleating something about the dishes, saying something about ‘West Farthing’ and ‘a hundred years old’, but Ori was too busy grinning.

One time, fifteen or sixteen years ago, Dori had just been getting his restaurant off the ground when he’d been invaded by a party of twenty miners who’d just come off shift. It had been the one and only time that Ori had worked as one of Dori’s waiters, and he had certainly earned every guilder of his pay that evening. It was bad enough keeping their tankards topped off when the miners were busy downing them as if they hadn’t drunk anything since the Second Age, but then every single one of them had insisted on ordering something different to eat. So, of course, Dori had moved like a hurricane through the kitchen, mixing, boiling, frying, baking, and otherwise looking like he was ready to fall down if he had a moment to himself.

When the miners were just about finished with their food, and Ori was doing another topping-off run around the table, one of the dwarves had tried to chat him up a bit. Ori had been about to apologize and tell him that he was already taken (a lie that had worked well enough in the past), when Dori yelped from the kitchen, and the dwarf had asked if everything was all right.

“Oh, it’s fine,” Ori remembered telling him. “It’s just that Dori’s in the kitchen by himself. He hasn’t made enough to hire a cook on yet, and well--”

The miners looked aghast, first at him and then at each other before they stood up as one and introduced Ori (and Dori, when he stopped flailing around and objecting loudly) to the sacred Ered Luin tradition of ‘Blunt the Knives’. An odd combination of housework and sport, the whole point of it was to wash the dishes (and sometimes the entire kitchen, as was the case in Dori’s restaurant) without breaking a single dish before the song ended.

Surfacing from his memories, Ori grinned as more plates and platters flew out into the corridor, Fili catching them and tossing them to Kili as if they were professionals. Ducking back into the dining room to help, Ori was soon catching a pile of plates and bowls, a bit worried about how quickly they were being tossed at him, and not sure if he was going to drop one by accident. Luckily, he cottoned on quickly enough that he didn’t need to work so hard to try to catch them, and just hold onto the stack of dishes before taking them to the kitchen. Since he had more than enough experience there, it was easy enough to present them to Bifur, who had taken up residence at the kitchen sink and was industriously scrubbing away while humming along.

The miners in Ered Luin all those years ago had had to improvise a few extra verses, but it looked like the company was a bit more efficient. With a few lines left and a penny whistle trilling along, Ori hustled back to the dining room.

Grabbing up his mug of ale, Ori grinned at Fili and Nori before the three of them stepped back to show Bilbo the short work they’d made of his dishes, laughing and shouting and banging on each other’s backs in congratulations. He found himself glancing in Dwalin’s direction, and suddenly realized that the fiddle he’d heard during the song had neither been Fili’s or Kili’s, but his soulmate’s.

Before he could marvel at it, there were three loud thumps on the front door.

“He’s here,” Gandalf said, sounding much more ominous than was really called for.

" _Who's_ here?" their host demanded shrilly.

Gandalf merely looked back at him and gestured toward the door expectantly. “Come now, Bilbo,” he said chidingly, “it’s not like you to leave visitors waiting on the mat.”

Bilbo boggled at him in outraged silence for a long moment before setting off towards the front door, grumbling under his breath. 

Ori set down his mug of ale and followed after the hobbit at a more sedate pace, shooting Dori a curious glance. “I didn’t think he’d get here so quickly.”

Dori shrugged, keeping pace with him. “Don’t forget that he’s had time to catch up with us,” he said as a soft reminder. “Besides, it’s best to meet here to plan out what we’re going to do next. No telling who might be out on the road to overhear us, after all.”

Ori rolled his eyes, stepping sideways to make room for a few others to crowd into the hall. Hugging the curved entryway, he murmured to Dori, “Really, it’s not like we’re being followed--”

Dori hushed him quickly just as Bilbo opened the door, revealing their leader.

Ori hadn’t had a chance to often see the exiled King of Erebor over the years, especially since he'd moved out of the halls of the Line of Durin. There were a few times during his apprenticeship when Ori had caught a glimpse or two of Thorin Oakenshield, but other than the one time that he’d seen the regal dwarf chasing his nephews wearing nothing but a bedsheet and waving a sword around, Thorin had been simply dressed. Now, wearing scale armor and clothes in deep blue that brought out the color in his eyes, he looked every inch a king going to war.

When Thorin Oakenshield stepped inside, he removed his cloak and complained about losing his way in a tone that implied Gandalf should’ve picked a burglar easier to find. He bundled his cloak and passed it to Kili, and it was as though the entire company were holding their breath.

Ori bowed when Thorin briefly turned in his direction, as did Dori, but he was just as curious as the rest as to what their leader would think of their host.

“So,” Thorin said, walking slowly around their host. “This is the hobbit.”

Ori checked a wince. He’d heard that sort of tone in years past, directed at Fili and Kili when they’d done something especially bone-headed. He looked again at Bilbo, wondering how the hobbit would take the implied criticism. A bit of back and forth between them, with Thorin asking pointed questions and their host flustered and off-balance, and then they were reconvening to the dining room where Bombur had saved a bowl of stew for Thorin, and everyone else sat quietly at the table and waited until Thorin had had his fill.

“What do the dwarves of the Iron Hills say?” Dwalin asked hopefully, his gaze steady on Thorin, his voice low. “Is Dain with us?”

The idea that Thorin Oakenshield kept in touch with the Lord of the Iron Hills despite the distance was a little surprising to Ori. The fact that Dwalin also knew Dain Ironfoot, and sounded like he was genuinely wanted to have his help on this quest, made Ori feel like there was a whole chapter in his soulmate’s life that he’d never even thought about before.

Just hearing a note of hope in Dwalin’s voice was new, and… interesting.

Thorin finished the bite he’d taken before speaking. “He will not come. He says this quest is ours, and ours alone.”

Ori felt a brief surge of satisfaction at the idea that no one else was going to try to demand the glory for themselves before he suddenly realized that it was going to be thirteen dwarves, a hobbit, and a wizard, facing down one fire-breathing dragon. Glancing around the table, he could see that the rest of the company looked resigned to their fate, with the exception of Fili and Kili, who looked almost thrilled at the idea.

"Excuse me," Bilbo broke the silence from the other end of the table, "but I haven't the first idea what you're talking about. What quest?"

Ori frowned at Gandalf. It was bad enough that Bilbo had acted like they’d eaten him out of house and home, but to not have any knowledge of what they were doing when they needed a burglar? He shot a worried glance at Fili, and then at Dori before returning his attention to the hobbit.

Thorin didn’t seem bothered that their would-be burglar didn’t know what they were planning, as he briefly explained about their history, and their desire to reclaim Erebor. 

It made for a very nice story, but Ori noticed the glaring omission of the dragon that was currently inhabiting the mountain, and he knew he couldn’t have been the only one.

“Then what’s stopped you from returning home before now?” Bilbo asked.

“The distance is certainly a _concern_ ,” Thorin snapped. “It’s past the Misty Mountains and the forest of Mirkwood.”

“And even if that weren’t the case,” Bofur added, taking a short drag from his pipe, “there’s also the dragon to contend with.”

“Dragon?” Bilbo squeaked.

“Oh, aye,” Bofur replied, completely oblivious to the murderous looks on Thorin’s and Gandalf’s faces. “Smaug the Terrible came to roost there, what, sixty years ago?”

“A bit more than that,” Ori murmured to himself, earning himself a look from Dwalin and a few others from the other side of the table. He tried not to wilt under the collective staring.

“Well, sixty years or more,” Bofur said with a shrug. “That’s liable to keep anyone away from home for a bit. The damn things live forever, if I remember the legends right.”

Ori could feel the collective attention he’d attracted shift over to Bofur in a wave of silent incredulity.

“Be that as it may,” Thorin said firmly, injecting his tone with as much authority as he could bring to bear, “between the distance and the dragon, we haven’t reclaimed our homeland.”

“And given the bad tidings from the meeting in Ered Luin,” Balin said from Bofur’s immediate right, “there’s only thirteen of us going on this quest to reclaim the mountain.”

"Fourteen," Gandalf corrected him. "You're forgetting Mister Baggins."

“What?” Bilbo squeaked, looking a little wild around the eyes. “What are you talking about?”

Ori couldn’t help trading suspicious glances with others around the table. Bifur didn’t look especially concerned, though he seemed to be staring at Thorin with a singular intensity. Dwalin, on the other hand, was watching their host with narrowed eyes.

“We were given to understand that you had some expertise in burglary," Balin said slowly. Ori had seen that look on his face often enough to know that Balin was growing less sure of Bilbo Baggins by the minute.

“Burglary--!” Bilbo’s eyes widened. “Why, I’ve never stolen a thing in my life! Why would I know anything about--” His eyes narrowed, and he turned on Gandalf. “What on earth have you been _saying_ about--”

“His relative experience is immaterial,” Gandalf said firmly, facing down Balin as if he hadn’t heard the hobbit at all. “Hobbits are remarkably light on their feet and can move unseen when they wish to. And while the dragon is accustomed to the smell of dwarf, the scent of hobbit is all but unknown to him, which gives us a distinct advantage.”

Ori couldn’t help glancing at Nori for a moment. When the idea of a burglar going into the mountain had come up, Ori had wondered why they’d needed a hobbit at all. After all, Nori had been quick and clever enough to elude dangerous crime bosses and a corrupt captain of the City Watch for decades; if anyone could slip past Smaug, surely it would be him. Now, at least, he had his answer, though why Gandalf hadn’t been clearer about his reasons sooner, Ori had no idea.

“Absolutely _not_ ,” Bilbo snapped. “I’ve never even set foot outside of the Shire! How could you possibly expect me to--”

Gandalf checked him from speaking further with a sharp glance, but the dwarves were trading glances around the table.

“Never set foot--” Kili muttered to himself, trading a startled look with Fili. “But that means--”

“The wild is no place for gentle folk who can neither fight nor fend for themselves,” Dwalin said firmly.

Dwalin hadn’t even glanced back at him since Ori’s muttered remark, but Ori could feel the weight of his disapproval all the same. Ori hadn’t spent the last seventeen years learning to fight, which probably made him just as unqualified to join the quest as their host. But he was going to be damned if he was left behind while an actual quest happened without him to chronicle the journey. He was also going to be damned if the Royal Library of Erebor was going to be left to molder in ruin.

“Gentle or not, we need a burglar,” Balin said firmly. “With the front gate sealed, there’s no way into that mountain.”

“That, my dear Balin, is not entirely true,” Gandalf said, reaching into a sleeve and pulling out a key with a flourish.

From what Ori could see of it, it was a steel key, darkened with age, of a design that made him think of the magical locks he’d seen in a book years ago from the library in Ered Luin.

Thorin frowned at the key before looking up at Gandalf from under his eyebrows. “What door does this open?”

“The door that this map describes,” Gandalf said, reaching into his sleeve and pulling out a yellowed piece of paper that he carefully spread on the table. “It speaks of a secret passage.” He tapped on part of the map while Thorin, Bofur, Dwalin, and Bilbo leaned in. “There is also another message hidden in this map, but I don’t have the skill to read it.”

Thorin’s eyes narrowed before his frown took on a puzzled note. “Dwalin, does this look... familiar to you?”

Dwalin’s eyes jerked up from the map to look at Thorin with some surprise. “Should it?” He traded a quick glance with Balin, and then Balin was standing in his chair, motioning for the map.

As Ori watched, Balin accepted the map with a puzzled frown. And then his expression froze. To anyone who didn’t know him well, he was still frowning at the page. But Ori could see how his shoulders went rigid.

His old master had recognized something on the map.

After a moment, Balin returned it to Thorin, who accepted it with narrow, blue eyes.

“It’s authentic,” Balin said tersely.

And it was something that he didn’t want to discuss in front of everyone.

Ori sat back in his chair, just in time to see Dori aim a confused frown at him. He shook his head, adding a ‘I wish I knew’ shrug for good measure.

Thorin carefully laid out the map again. “So, your idea is to find this secret entrance into the mountain--” He narrowed his eyes at the map, and tilted his head just a little. “It looks like it would lead to the upper halls, if the map is drawn to scale.”

Gandalf nodded. “Indeed. And since Bilbo would be able to walk through the mountain unseen, he would have a chance to slip by the dragon.”

“That doesn’t sound terribly specific, Gandalf,” Bilbo said, looking at the wizard with some annoyance. “What is it that I’m supposed to be burgling anyway?” He seemed to remember himself, because he quickly added, “If I were to accept the job, I mean.”

“We’ll tell you when we get there,” Thorin said shortly.

“And what about this dragon you keep mentioning?” Bilbo said, still directing his questions to Gandalf. 

“Oh, you mean Smaug the Terrible?” Bofur asked. From where Ori was sitting, he could see a sly look in Bofur’s eyes, and wasn’t sure if that boded well or not. “Chiefest and greatest of calamities of our Age?”

Bilbo turned to face Bofur, his hands on his hips and his eyes narrowed. “Yes, I believe that would be him,” he said sarcastically.

“What is it you want to know?” Bofur asked with a smile, clenching his pipe between his teeth. “That he’s at least ten times the size of this little burrow you have here? Teeth like razors, claws like meathooks?”

As Bofur peppered their host with questions, and the hobbit grew paler and paler, Ori couldn’t help getting caught up in the enthusiasm around the table. Across the table, Dwalin didn’t appear to be as excited as the rest of the company, scowling at Bofur like he wanted to reach over and strangle him.

Buoyed on the growing excitement at the table and the tales dwarves would tell of their heroism for Ages to come, Ori smirked. He might have wanted to make a good impression on his soulmate when he was younger, but now Dwalin’s scowls and disapproval didn’t scare him anymore. He’d already proved as much back when the journey began, at the Red Boar Inn.

So, it was with an overstated sense of swagger that Ori stood up from his chair and said loudly, “I’m not afraid! I’m up for it! I’ll give him a taste of dwarvish iron, right up his jacksie!”

He’d survived being tortured by a dwarf who’d wanted him to suffer horribly before he died.

A dragon, in comparison, was going to be child’s play.

Just as Dori was smacking at him with a “Sit _down_!” thrown in for good measure, the rest of the table erupted into chaos. Fili and Kili were backing him -- he knew that without even having to think about it -- but the others were shouting in a cacophony that made part of Ori want to stand up and stand his ground, and another part of him want to hide under the table in sheer embarrassment. He could see Bifur jump up from his chair, shouting and raising his fists agitatedly, Oin slapping the table with his ear trumpet still jammed in his ear, Fili pointing an accusing finger at Nori.

When he met Dwalin’s gaze, however, Ori firmly told himself that looks really _couldn’t_ kill, no matter how much the dwarf directing them might have wished it.

“ _Silence_!” Thorin roared in Khuzdul, standing up in his own chair. To a dwarf, everyone fell silent and sat back down. When Thorin’s gaze swept over him, Ori wondered just how roomy it was under the table.

Gandalf appeared unmoved by the display, choosing instead to light his pipe. “Well, it’s important to be enthusiastic about your work, I suppose,” he muttered into his beard, glancing behind Thorin. Then he sighed in exasperation. “Oh, that was _most_ helpful, Bofur.”

“What’s happened?” Ori asked tentatively.

“Only that our host has fainted,” Gandalf grumbled, getting up from his chair and ducking through the doorway to tend to the hobbit in question.

The dwarves around the table looked as startled as Ori felt.

“Fainted?” Gloin asked, incredulity creeping into his tone.

“And we hadn’t even shown him the contract yet,” Bofur said, sounding surprised. “I would’ve thought it'd be the bit about incineration that'd do him in.”

The meeting ended somewhat abruptly afterwards, what with Gandalf trying to wake their host, and Thorin disappearing down a corridor to confer with Balin. Thorin’s only order when the rest of the company got up from the table was to reconvene in an hour in one of the sitting rooms to sing for their supper.

Suddenly left to his own devices until then, Ori migrated into one of the rooms that looked reasonably well-lit by a roaring fire in the fireplace. The only other occupants were Gloin and Bifur, both seated at a wooden table, and looking distracted for different reasons. Gloin stared into the fireplace, seeming to be lost in thought. Bifur, on the other hand, was focused on a clockwork toy in his hands, staring unblinkingly at it as he turned it over and over, testing different joints and muttering darkly to himself.

For a moment, Ori debated whether or not to try to start a conversation, just to be polite, but with how preoccupied both dwarves looked, he figured it was better to leave them be. Sitting at the table, he dug out his journal from the inside pocket of his cardigan, opened it to the page he’d been working on, and updated his notes on all that had happened over the past few days. He’d lost track of the time until a new voice spoke up, closer than he’d been expecting.

“What’re you doing, lad?” Oin demanded.

Ori jumped with a yelp, yanking his quill away from his journal out of habit to keep it from dripping ink on the pages.

Gloin had jumped too, glaring at Ori half-heartedly before turning on his brother. “Can’t you see what he’s doing?” he demanded gruffly.

Oin glanced at him for a moment before snorting and favoring Ori with a gimlet eye. “Well?”

Ori shot him an annoyed look. “Taking notes on wh--” When he saw Oin seat his trumpet more firmly in his ear, Ori sighed and said louder into the trumpet, “Taking notes on what's happened over the past few days.”

Oin grunted, looking skeptical. “Your eyes aren’t bothering you, are they?”

Ori blinked. “No?” he said slowly, mystified. The light in the room wasn’t bad enough that he couldn’t see. “Why should they be?”

“You were nearly kissing the table just now,” Oin said. “You’ll need more light if you’re going to write.”

Ori checked a snort with some difficulty. “I’ve written under worse conditions, Master Oin, but thank you for your concern.”

“After that bout of blindness when you were younger, you’re better served if you treat your eyes more kindly,” Oin said firmly.

Ori told himself firmly that insisting that he wasn’t a dwarfling anymore wasn’t going to win him the argument. Instead, he set his quill down on the table and picked up his journal. Holding it up so that Oin could see his work so far, he said in a dry tone, “Seeing as how we’re not going to pass by any shops with empty journals on our way to Erebor, I think I might need the space if I’m to write down everything that happens.”

The old healer peered at the page Ori had been working on. The moment Oin realized he was looking at neat rows of tiny lettering, Ori couldn’t help feeling a bit smug. A moment later, as if on cue, Oin seemed to remember that he was supposed to be annoyed, because he straightened up with a huff, his salt-and-pepper ram’s braids shaking under the force of his disapproval. “And your throat?”

“Oh, leave off about his throat,” Gloin grumbled. “Can’t you tell from the way the lad sounds that he’s fine?” He looked at Ori’s book curiously. “Mind if I see that?”

“No, not at all,” Ori said automatically, offering the book to Gloin while looking at Oin. “My throat?” he asked blankly. The old healer’s concern about his sight had made _some_ sense, but now Ori was sure Oin was inventing things to check on. “What’s wrong with my throat?”

In the face of Ori’s bewilderment, Oin grunted. “Dwalin said you were sneezing and clearing your throat when we were passing near that bog yesterday.”

Ori set his jaw with deliberate care while firmly telling himself that snapping at Oin was rude and uncalled for. “Begging your pardon, Master Oin, but if I were feeling sick, I would come to you myself.”

Oin snorted, looking unsurprised. “And if you didn’t, Dori would.”

Ori acknowledged the statement with a rueful nod and a long-suffering sigh.

Oin chuckled. “Well, if you start to feel ill--”

Ori nodded again. “I’ll come find you.”

Oin nodded firmly in return. “Good lad.”

***

Singing for their supper was something that Ori had never done before, but he was surprised at how much he enjoyed it.

Some of the company were quite good at playing instruments -- it always surprised Ori whenever Fili and Kili would fiddle a jig without missing a beat, considering how much they’d both complained about having to learn when they were younger. Ori himself was involved in a three-dwarf drumming circle with his brothers, Dori recounting a traveling song while Nori added in a few flourishes that looked specifically designed to annoy their eldest brother to no end. Ori was just happy that Dori didn’t make him sing mostly because he was lucky if he could carry a tune in a bucket with both hands.

At first, Bilbo had tried to refuse the entertainment, declaring that he wasn’t about to kick them out when they didn’t have a place to stay for the night, but as the music continued on -- and Bilbo’s dishes weren’t in immediate danger -- Ori could see that their host was getting into the spirit of things. He didn’t jump up and dance, though he was certainly tapping his foot during the livelier songs.

As Bofur trilled a melody that was an old standard in some of the pubs in Ered Luin, Ori found himself watching Thorin approach the fireplace, resting his forearm against the mantle and staring into the fire. As the last notes died away, Thorin shared a quick glance with Balin and Dwalin, and then hummed a long, low note.

It seemed to have a special significance for most of the company, because while Bifur and Bombur looked like they didn’t recognize it, Ori could feel the energy shift throughout the room, straightening backs and injecting a somber mood into the proceedings. There was something… familiar about the song, though Ori wasn’t entirely sure why.

He found out soon enough when Thorin sang the first line of the ballad of Smaug’s coming.

Ori had learned the song from Nori, decades ago when Ori was too young to have understood the significance of it. He’d liked the dark and haunting tone of it, had thought that it had been a magic spell given shape and form.

When Thorin Oakenshield was singing -- a dwarf who had been there, had seen trees blazing like torches in the night, had smelled the blood and ash in the air as Erebor fell -- it almost felt real.

Ori might not have been able to carry a tune to save his life, but he could hum fairly well.

He stood up from his chair, holding onto his journal and staring into the fire as Thorin was doing, wondering if Thorin was still in the sitting room with them, or if he was half a world away, remembering what had happened. Distantly, he knew that Dori was standing as well, and Nori was looking into the fire from the other side of the room.

A warm presence stood next to him as he hummed, strong and comforting like a mountain.

As the last line of the song hung in the air, Ori glanced at the comforting presence, and wondering why he hadn’t noticed sooner that it was Dwalin.

Dwalin glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, uncompromising as always, but for a moment, Ori felt like he was… safe.

The company quickly disbanded after that, Thorin telling everyone to find a place to sleep, because they were leaving at first light.

Ori had taken a moment to pause and tuck his journal back into his cardigan only to look up and find that Dori and Nori had wandered off without him. Rolling his eyes, he set off in search of them and a comfortable enough place to lay down.

After getting turned around a few times before finding what he hoped was the main corridor, he idly peeked into a room to see Balin and Dwalin standing next to each other, talking in low voices. Ori couldn’t hear anything from where he stood, and while his curiosity was telling him he should move in closer to try to hear what was being said (sounding remarkably like Kili), he told himself firmly that eavesdropping was rude.

Dwalin scowled down at his older brother, his arms folded across his chest, but paused when Balin carefully pulled a folded, yellowed piece of paper from inside of his jacket, and opened it.

Dwalin’s eyes narrowed at Balin before he snorted, but then Balin said something that made Dwalin pause again.

Dwalin took the paper from him and looked at it carefully, his blue eyes taking in every detail.

Balin reached forward, and pointed at one spot on the map, murmuring something, his expression solemn.

Dwalin’s eyes flicked up to meet his brother’s, scowling, and then his gaze lowered to look at the paper again.

Ori wasn’t sure how he knew, but one moment, Dwalin was examining the paper and then he found whatever Balin had pointed at, because he froze where he stood, staring at the paper blankly. His eyes were wide and blue, looking almost... lost.

Balin watched him for a long moment before reaching out and patting his shoulder much like he did whenever Ori was discouraged that an assignment wasn’t turning out well.

Just as Ori was about to walk down the corridor to continue his search for his brothers, Balin glanced over at him, looking unsurprised to find him standing there. Then he said something else to Dwalin, who was still enraptured by the map, and headed out of the room by way of a door that Ori couldn’t see.

Feeling a bit embarrassed that Balin had caught him openly staring at the two of them, Ori was about to duck down the corridor when Dwalin lifted his gaze from the map, and stared at him.

The lost look in Dwalin’s eyes melted away as Ori stared helplessly back at him, leaving behind the dark look that Ori became quite familiar with when he was an apprentice. The biggest difference between that moment and seventeen years ago was that Ori lifted both eyebrows at him, hoping that he looked as unruffled as he felt.

Blue eyes narrowed at him, even as Dwalin’s hands shoved the map into his fur vest. “Well, if it isn’t Ori the Dragonslayer,” he said gruffly.

As insults went, Ori had heard better. “And to think, all the dwarves who hear the tale of Erebor’s reclamation in the years to come will be so disappointed that I’m just a scribe,” he said dryly.

“That dragon’s not going to die so easily,” Dwalin snarled, “no matter how much optimism you throw at him.”

“Don’t be silly, Captain,” Ori said, feeling as though he were running so fast that he was lighter than air. The more he spoke, the more he felt like he was going to crash into something, and shatter into a million pieces. “The optimism is for the feasting after the mountain’s been reclaimed.”

Dwalin opened his mouth to say something, but blinked a few times. He was still frowning, but it looked like Ori had stumped him.

One moment, Ori was fighting down a smirk because he’d rendered Dwalin speechless, for however long it lasted. The next moment, Ori was frowning as well, because for all that he was revelling in his victory, it felt like he was standing on ice that was cracking beneath his feet. The look on Dwalin’s face made him think that maybe his soulmate felt the same way.

That lost look in Dwalin’s eyes was slowly returning, which reminded Ori of what he’d accidentally seen. “I’m sorry for interrupting your moment with Master Balin.”

Dwalin blinked.

“It looked... private,” Ori added lamely.

Dwalin’s habitual scowl returned with a vengeance. “Aye, it was.” He looked like he was going to say something else, but then he clammed up and strode out of the room, looking like he would break through the curved walls if he had to in order to find his bed.

Ori stared after him for a long moment, his gaze caught by Dwalin’s hips, before he rolled his eyes.

***

“There you are,” Dori said, snapping out a blanket and laying it carefully on the floor. “I was wondering if I was going to have to organize a search party in order to find you.”

Ori cleared his throat, glancing around the room curiously to find it was a small library. The books were in various states of disrepair, some of the spines broken from what Ori could tell at first glance. The well-loved ones were within easy reach of someone a bit shorter than himself, though that made a certain amount of sense -- they belonged to their host, after all. “Sorry to worry you.”

“No worries,” Nori said from his indolent sprawl on one of the armchairs near the banked fireplace. “Dori likes worrying. It’s when he don’t have no one to worry over that he starts getting tetchy.”

“Hush,” Dori grumbled, busying himself with arranging their packs on the floor to make three separate pillows. “Didn’t get too lost, did you? Thorin said we were leaving at first light, and I want to make sure we have plenty of time to get ready.”

Nori rolled his eyes. “Ori’s old enough to find the toilet without needing a minder.”

Dori shot him a scowl before turning to Ori. “Don’t mind your obnoxious older brother, and go ahead and pick a spot. We’ll need all the rest we can get.”

Ori nodded before settling down. It was probably silly to choose the middle, what with how much he hated feeling trapped, but for some reason, he wanted to feel like both of his brothers were there with him; he wasn’t sure why.


	4. The Shire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the night spent in Bag End, they begin the journey in earnest.
> 
> Unfortunately, it's dead boring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sweet Christ, this chapter felt like it took forever to finish, but I'm hoping that the next few chapters will be a much faster turnaround.
> 
> Many thanks to Penniform for beta-reading and holding my hand while I fought this chapter tooth and nail. And many thanks to Dragonsquill, and TheJerseyDevile for their encouragement while I wailed and bemoaned my outcast state. You guys are awesome. <3

Nori snorted. “He’s not coming.”

“Why not?” Ori demanded as he eased his foot into the stirrup and pulled himself up onto his pony with some difficulty. The animal was about as enthusiastic about the arrangement as he was, though it seemed that the pony was willing to tolerate his presence. Getting a better grip on the reins, he added, “He looked interested when we were singing the ballad.”

Nori shot him a darkly amused look. “Oh, yeah, because trees _blazing like torches_ is gonna inspire armies to follow us.” He looked around pointedly, and then raised braided eyebrows at Ori.

“Just because Dain isn’t coming from the Iron Hills doesn’t mean that no one would want to come,” Ori objected with a scowl. “We’re all here, aren’t we?”

Before Nori could make a snide remark, Oin spoke from atop his own pony. “I wouldn’t count the lad out just yet. The hobbit sounded like he was giving it a good think when he was talking to the wizard.”

“When’d you hear him do that?” Fili asked as he and Kili guided their ponies to stand near Nori and Ori’s mounts. Both brothers looked at Oin curiously as the older dwarf adjusted his ear trumpet.

Oin nodded towards Ori and replied, “When the lad here was writing in his journal about the trip so far.” 

“What’s there to write about?” Kili scoffed. “ ‘We walked a few miles, and passed a bog. It was pretty stinky, and everything was boring. Still not at Erebor.’ See? Easy.“

Ori rolled his eyes, completely unsurprised by Kili’s lack of interest. “There’s what the Shire looks like, and all the different things we’ve seen on the way to Master Baggins’s. That would be important for the retelling.”

“Why’s that?” Kili insisted. “It’s not like we’re going to be here all that long.”

“You haven’t looked at a map, have you?” Fili smirked. “The Shire’s pretty big. We might be traveling through it for a few days.”

“I thought we were going on the Great East Road?” Kili frowned.

“We are,” Nori said. “It goes through Halfling country.”

Ahead of them, Ori could see Thorin and Balin speaking with Gandalf before Thorin peered up at the mid-morning sky. With an annoyed shake of his head, he turned to the rest and announced, “We’ve waited long enough. Move out.”

Nori shot Ori an amused look. “See?”

“It’s not the end of the day yet,” Ori said firmly. “He’ll show up.”

“Maybe he’s just sleeping in,” Kili offered, not looking like he believed it himself.

Ori felt he could do without the false sympathy. Turning to his brother, he said, “Mister Baggins is going to come with us. You’ll see.”

“You want to make a wager on that?” Nori’s grin was slow and teasing.

From where he was mounted nearby, Dori looked like he was about to intervene, but Ori folded his arms over his chest and glared at Nori. “You know what? I do. I’ll put down my last two guilders that Mister Baggins will show up before we make camp for the night.”

“Three guilders says he won’t,” Fili chimed in. At the annoyed look Ori shot him, he shrugged. “He’s not here, and it’s nearly midday.”

And just like that, the betting was on. Just about everyone in the company got in on it, coins passing into Nori’s hands until the sack that Nori was using for the wagers was nearly splitting the seams. Gandalf earned a few surprised looks when he placed a wager on the hobbit’s coming, and it was then that Ori was sure that he was going to win.

If the wizard thought that their host was going to follow them, who was anyone to say otherwise?

***

“Wait!”

Ori blinked, turning to look over his shoulder at the rear of the group, thinking he might have imagined the shout. But no, he could see a hobbit with honey-colored curls and a burgundy jacket running after them. Oddly enough, he was holding up a long piece of unfurled parchment that flapped behind him like a banner.

“Is that who I think it is?” Bofur asked with a delighted grin in his voice.

“Wait!” the hobbit shouted again, and Ori suddenly realized that it was their host, dressed in clothes that looked a little too fine for rough travel.

Gloin groaned loudly. “I’m out five guilders.”

As Ori watched in fascination, Bilbo ran past the ponies to the head of the group, stopping when he drew even with Balin. He had a winded smile on his face as he offered the parchment to Balin. “I signed it.”

Balin took it from him, giving him a look before pulling out a loupe from his pocket and examined the signature. Ori was wondering why his former master was drawing out the moment, because judging from the look in his eye, Balin had been ready to welcome him when the team had stopped to watch him run to catch up.

“Everything appears to be in order,” Balin announced, raising his voice so the rest of the company could hear him. “Welcome, Master Baggins, to the company of Thorin Oakenshield.”

Bilbo gave Balin the biggest, sunniest smile, to the fond chuckles of some of the dwarves.

Thorin, however, didn’t seem so impressed. “Give him a pony.”

Ori glanced at the back of the group, wondering where there was a pony that wasn’t being used as a pack animal, and found that Fili and Kili were threading their way forward, Fili leading a pony between them.

“No, no, no, that won’t be necessary,” Bilbo said suddenly, holding out a hand as if it were going to ward off any ponies from being offered to him. “I can keep up on foot. I’ve done my fair share of walking holidays--”

At this point, Fili and Kili had reached him, and without missing a beat, they reached down together and scooped him up. Bilbo squawked in outrage, and was quickly deposited on the pony between them.

Fili shot Ori a smile over his shoulder as he did so. Ori, all too familiar with Fili’s love of showing off, rolled his eyes.

As much as they’d returned to being friends ever since their disastrous first attempt at a kiss years back, there were times Ori wondered if Fili still cared about him as more than just friends. Even though Fili was the older, more responsible brother, he secretly liked showing off as much as Kili did, though he saved it for times when it was just the two of them.

“S’not a bad bit of all right, that,” Nori said, suddenly at Ori’s elbow.

Startling in his saddle, Ori glared at his older brother as he tried to summon what dignity he could. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Nori raised an eyebrow at him again, showing just how little he was fooled. “Heir to the throne, young, strong. Doesn’t get much better than that, though you might have a time on your hands convincing the family that you’ll be a good match for him if you go for it.”

Ori adjusted his cardigan to cover his nervous fidgeting, still trying to glare as best he could. “Fili is a good friend, and he doesn’t deserve--”

“You’re as bad as some of the boys I’ve worked with,” Nori complained, rolling his eyes. “I’ll tell you what I told them -- you didn’t pick _him_. You’ve just got something inside you that says you should be together, right?”

Ori stared at him, startled, but Nori kept going.

“But if you’re picking _that_ one,” Nori nodded over to Fili, as if Ori needed reminding who he was referring to. “That’s _you_ making the choice, and that’s just as important, yeah?”

Ori frowned at him. “Yeah.”

Nori nodded firmly. “Right. Here you go.” He tossed a small burlap pouch to Ori, who caught it with some confusion. “Your take on the wager?” he prompted.

Ori frowned, undoing the drawstring and peering inside. “How much is _in_ here?”

“More than enough to cause some griping,” Nori admitted. “How’d you know he’d come?”

Ori smiled at him a bit ruefully. “Because I’m here.”

Nori frowned at him for a long moment before shaking his head, asking a question with his eyes.

Ori shrugged. “It’s not that strange, Nori. I wanted to travel like you did, but I also want to be a part of something important. If taking back Erebor from a dragon isn’t important, I don’t know what is.”

Nori snorted. “Just make sure you don’t get yourself killed,” he muttered. “I don’t think Dori would be able to handle it if something happened to you.”

Ori wasn’t fooled by the look in Nori’s eye. “I’m thinking my other brother might be bothered by it too,” he said in acknowledgement. Nori had never liked being made aware of the fact that he loved either of his brothers outright.

Nori rolled his eyes and aimed a half-hearted swipe at Ori’s hair. “When’d this happen? Dori catch up and pop a bowl on your head again?”

Ori sighed heavily. “He woke me before he opened the restaurant one morning, and before I knew what he was doing, he was almost done.”

When Nori started chuckling, Ori glared at him. “It sounds like something you would’ve done, if the state of my hair was something that bothered you.”

Nori stopped in his chuckling for a moment, and then nodded in acknowledgement. “Sounds like me. Maybe I rubbed off on him more than I thought.”

“Maybe it was the other way ‘round,” Ori offered.

Nori looked startled for a moment before he let out a run of chuckles that earned a curious glance or two. When he got his breath back, he shook his head. “Our brother? Mister Prim and Proper himself?”

“You had to have gotten it from somewhere,” Ori pointed out.

Nori snorted. “I know that you didn’t know Mum before she died, but she was a troublemaker when she was around your age, if all the stories she told me and Dori were true.” His lips curled into a quirk of a smile. “I come by it honest, promise.”

Ori snorted. “I’ll have to ask her when I meet her in the Halls of Waiting.”

“Just make sure it’s not too soon, eh?” Nori asked with deceptive lightness.

Ori was so startled by the remark that he looked over at his brother, only to see that Nori was looking straight ahead, his hands careless on his reins.

After a long moment, hazel eyes slid over to glance at him nonchalantly. “How come you’re here anyway? And don’t give me that guff about wanting to travel. Anyone can travel. Anywhere they want, even.”

Ori frowned, but turned to look forward as well. “But one of the largest libraries of dwarven history and culture isn’t just ‘anywhere’.”

“You know that if that dragon’s still there, you could get killed, don’t you,” Nori said. It sounded like it should’ve been a question, but he already knew the answer to it.

Ori nodded, trying to imagine how big Smaug would be, the fiery breath that could roast him in an instant. “There’s a chance I could survive, too.” He wasn’t entirely sure he believed himself, but it was better than knowing he was going to certain death.

“A library’s worth that much to you, then?” Nori asked, sounding skeptical.

Ori shrugged. “I want to know more about soulspeaking, about soulmates. And I’ve already read all the books that Ered Luin has on the subject. If I can restore the royal collection, maybe I can help someone like me who hasn’t had the best time of it.”

Nori was quiet for so long that Ori thought he’d ridden on ahead in the group. “I don’t care what anybody says, Ori. He don’t deserve you.”

Ori gave his older brother a smile. “Thanks.”

***

The eastern part of Eriador, unfortunately, was much like the western part. There had been a few hobbit villages, but Ori had rapidly come to the conclusion that once he’d seen one hamlet, complete with suspicious and worried hobbits that stared openly at them, he really had seen them all. They moved at such a sedate pace that even the ponies looked bored.

It was the first night after they’d passed through the village of Bree when anything remarkable happened, and only then, it was that Ori remembered the map to the Lonely Mountain. He could’ve blamed the monotony of the countryside for making him forget, but it seemed like a poor excuse, especially since the map seemed to have more history behind it than at first glance.

Another reason that Ori was sure he’d forgotten about it was that the map hadn’t come up in conversation since Bag End. While the rest of the company had entertained themselves by making small talk, Thorin, Dwalin, and Balin rode at the head of the group with Gandalf, keeping an eye on the road ahead and not speaking much at all. 

Given his former master’s unusual reaction to it, Ori found himself making a plan of when to speak to him. During his apprenticeship, there had been little that Master Balin had kept from him, so whatever was on that map had been something that Balin had felt the rest of the company didn’t need to know about. And having seen Balin with his brother, pouring over the map, it had been something that affected Dwalin too.

Asking during the day wouldn’t have worked, because Balin was likely to refuse to answer questions that Ori had. Asking around while they sat around the campfire was out for the same reason, even if more of the company were going to be occupied with other things. Which left asking in private, which was probably easier said than done.

“Master?”

Balin looked up from where he was drawing a whetstone across one cutting edge of his sword, his white eyebrows lifted.

Ori cleared his throat a bit self-consciously. “May I ask you something?” It felt silly to ask, but given what he was about to inquire about, he couldn’t think of a better way to start the conversation.

Balin tilted his head with a small smile. “I believe you just did.”

Ori knew he’d forgotten an important part to his question. “In private?”

Balin chuckled. “It’s all right, lad.” He stood up and put his whetstone into his pocket and sheathed his sword before dusting himself off. “Shall we?” He nodded over to the small stretch of woods not far from the campfire.

Ori nodded. As Balin led the way, he said in a low enough tone, “It’s about the map.”

Balin shot him an intrigued look over his shoulder before they came to a stop in a small clearing. “Oh?”

The moonlight shone through an opening in the canopy, giving them just enough light to see the thick grassy turf and a few groups of mushrooms near the base of some of the trees.

Ori shrugged. “You looked like you saw something on the map that you recognized, maybe?”

Balin continued to watch him, his brown eyes almost black in the moonlight. “There are times when you never cease to amaze me, Ori.”

Ori smiled a little at the compliment before he realized that there was probably a very good reason Balin hadn’t told anyone, let alone him, what he’d noticed. “If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. I mean, I want to know, but--”

Balin shook his head. “There’s not really much to tell. You saw when I was showing the map to Dwalin, of course.”

Ori nodded. “What was it that you were showing him? Something on the map itself?”

Balin smiled. “A very distinctive way to write the thirty-first rune. It’s more compressed than it should be, to the point where it resembles the fourth rune. Mother always said that she was in too much of a hurry to write it properly.”

“Your mother…?” At first, Ori hadn’t understood what his master’s mother had had to do with the map, but it clicked a moment after he asked.

Balin nodded. “Aye. She was a librarian before Erebor fell.”

“And afterward?” Ori asked gently. He knew that Balin was a few decades shy of his second century, so it was likely that Balin’s mother had passed on some years ago, if she wasn’t still alive in Ered Luin--

Any hint of a smile slipped from Balin’s features. “She died when Smaug attacked,” he said softly.

Ori felt his heart drop like a stone. “Oh. Master--”

Balin shook his head. “No need to apologize, lad. You didn’t know because I didn’t tell you.”

Ori opened his mouth to say something else, but Balin held up a hand.

“It’s fine, Ori, truly. Dwalin was quite close to our mother, so I thought he might appreciate knowing that she’d been the one to create the map.”

Ori frowned. “But it was Thorin who thought it might look familiar, not Master Dwalin…?”

Balin’s smile was bittersweet. “My brother and Thorin have always been very close, ever since they were dwarflings. They were much like Fili and Kili are now, come to think of it. Thorin loved our mother nearly as much as we did.”

Ori bit his lip, embarrassed and curious. “What was she like?”

“A bit shorter than you are now, actually,” Balin said with a smile. “Intelligent, kind, very loving. I always felt that she had been the best librarian the Lonely Mountain had ever had, but I’ll admit to some bias.”

Ori couldn’t help smiling back. “Neither of you became librarians? I thought that was what happened in the noble families…”

Balin shook his head. “I was the more scholarly of the both of us, but I had decided on studying the law. Dwalin has a good head for numbers, but I think you’ll agree that he’s a dwarf of action.”

Ori found himself remembering the morning when Balin had told him that Kollr Longshanks had been murdered in vivid detail, and nodded.

Balin watched him for a long moment before sighing gently. “For all that our mother had been young when we were born, she had been someone Dwalin could turn to when he was in need of good advice. During the wandering years, I think he could’ve benefited from her wisdom a great deal…” His gaze softened, looking into memories that didn’t look all that pleasant to revisit. Returning to himself a moment later, Balin shook his head. “Well, what’s done is done.”

“I’m sorry,” Ori said softly. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

“It’s not your fault,” Balin said. “There is more of the past that you don’t know about, but how will you learn if you don’t ask?”

Ori couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed. “I don’t want to be the one who opens old wounds, though.”

Balin smiled, looking brittle around the edges. “There are times when you have to open them, if you want them to stop hurting.”

Ori found himself thinking about how very absent Dwalin had been from his life for the past seventeen years, and how the dwarf seemed determined to make up for it now by glaring at him and mocking him each chance he got.

 _Sometimes,_ he thought to himself, _it’s best to leave old wounds alone._

***

Another week of camping and more boring countryside later, Ori could feel the telltale shiver run down his spine that signaled that Dwalin was close by, and most likely heading in the direction of the campfire.

When he looked up to see where Dwalin was approaching from, Ori was surprised by how close he’d gotten.

Determined to appear unruffled by the sudden appearance, Ori set his quill aside and cracked the knuckles in his right hand. "Ah, Captain. What did I do this time?"

Dwalin glanced around the fire, taking in the other dwarves who were starting to watch the two of them with surprised interest. Glowering down at Ori, he nodded away from the fire. “I need to speak with you for a minute. Alone.”

Ori frowned for a moment, but got himself to his feet. Part of him was tempted to tell him to just say it out loud in front of the company, but if Dwalin wanted privacy, it might have been about something that Ori wouldn’t have wanted talked about amongst the company. He kept his journal open in order to let the ink dry, but raised his eyebrows at Dwalin. “Lead the way, please?”

Dwalin grunted once, and then stomped off into the woods, just within sight of the campfire. Ori was fairly sure that the rest of the company were intrigued by this unusual turn of events, but he found he was more curious about what Dwalin had to say than whatever the others were thinking.

They reached the edge of the woods when he turned to Dwalin, and said, “What did you want to speak to me about?”

Dwalin didn’t waste any time. "What lies have you been feeding Fili and Kili?"

Ori blinked. If he had been expecting anything out of his soulmate, that definitely hadn’t been it. "... Lies?"

"Aye," Dwalin grunted, folding his arms across his broad chest.

It took a moment for Ori to realize that his soulmate wasn’t going to elaborate. Sighing heavily, he asked as patiently as he could manage, “I don't know, Captain, what did they tell you?"

Dwalin drew himself up, looking thunderous. "That I can’t stand the sight of you, and that I'd let you return to the Halls of Waiting the first chance I got."

Ori blinked. For a wild moment, he thought that Fili and Kili had guessed Dwalin’s identity as his soulmate, and had threatened his life, but seeing as how his soulmate was standing in front of him, looking no worse for wear, Ori dismissed the idea immediately.

The words Dwalin used sunk in, reminding Ori of times past when Fili and Kili had asked him about his soulmate. Sometimes, he’d been glib about his relationship with Dwalin, describing Dwalin’s distaste for him briefly and not sounding like he cared all that much for his soulmate’s good opinion.

It had been later hours of the night, when the three of them had passed around a bottle “liberated” from somewhere, that he had given voice to some of his darker theories. At the time, Ori had thought that Fili and Kili wouldn’t remember them because of how much alcohol they’d drunk, but it seemed that the brothers had better memories than Ori had guessed.

Ori knew that confirming anything to his soulmate would result in an argument that he didn’t want to have in front of the company, so he settled for redirection. "What exactly happened?"

Dwalin growled at him, his blue eyes narrowing. “We had a conversation. What do you think?”

Ori couldn’t help but remember how much that growl would have scared him when he was younger. Now, he folded his arms across his chest and tried to look as unimpressed as possible. "And what exactly was _said_ during the conversation?”

When Dwalin didn’t answer, Ori rolled his eyes. “Captain, how am I supposed to translate Fili and Kili into the common tongue if you don't give me the context?"

"I've been translating their idiocy longer than you have," Dwalin growled.

"And yet here you are, demanding answers from me about what _they_ were talking about," Ori replied dryly.

Dwalin visibly bristled. “I don’t--”

He stopped suddenly, turning quickly to the trees surrounding them. A moment later, Fili burst out of the underbrush with a loud rustling, and stared at them with wide eyes.

“Dwalin--” He began breathlessly.

“What’s wrong?” Dwalin snapped, turning his glower on Fili.

“Bilbo--” He pointed behind him vaguely, trying to catch his breath. “Trolls!”


	5. Eastern Eriador

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ori would like to take back everything he thought about the quest being boring. He wants it to be boring. Dreadfully boring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thanks to Penniform and Elsajeni for all their help and hard work. Thanks also to ForAllLove, TheJerseyDevile, and DragonsQuill for being patient with me while I babbled about writing amazingly quickly. With any luck, the rest of the fic will get written this quickly instead of languishing. :D

"Stay close to me, whatever you do,” Dori panted, winded from the running as the company crashed through the underbrush. Up ahead, Ori could see Fili and Kili frantically leading the way. “Your slingshot is better at range. Try to aim for the eyes, if you can.”

“What if someone’s in trouble?” Ori asked, puffing along as he half-ran, half-tripped through a bush.

“Aim for the eyes, like I said,” Dori huffed. “But don’t draw too much attention to yourself. I don’t want you getting caught by one of them.”

“Quiet,” Thorin snapped. “We’re close.”

They slowed down, with Thorin and Dwalin joining Fili and Kili at the front of the group, and the rest of them hanging back. Ori could see a large, roaring camp fire through a gap in the trees, along with the three enormous trolls. One of them seemed to be holding something by one leg--

“They’ve got Bilbo!” Ori whispered quickly, his heart racing.

“Shh!” Dori shushed him frantically, drawing his sword.

“Are there anymore of you little fellas hiding where you shouldn’t?” the troll holding Bilbo by one leg demanded. He looked brawny for a troll (at least as far as Ori could tell), and held a large, rough blade in his other hand.

“Nope!” Bilbo managed, his arms dangling. If the situation hadn’t been so hair-raising, Ori would’ve had trouble keeping a straight face because of how ridiculous the usually well-dressed hobbit looked. His hair was a complete mess, and it looked like he was covered in some sort of clear slime.

“He’s lying!” A second troll snarled. He looked skinnier than the others, and had a higher-pitched voice. “Hold his toes over the fire!” the troll snarled. “Make him _squeal_.”

Ori’s heart hammered in his chest, filling his ears with a loud thudding.

At a nod from Thorin, Kili darted out of the woods behind the rangy troll, swinging his sword at the back of the troll’s calf, and then across his shin. When he got clear of the wounded troll hopping and falling over, he barked out, “Drop him!”

“You wot?” the first troll snarled, his shoulders drawing themselves up.

“I said,” Kili began, with a flourish that Ori recognized from Fili’s own sword work, “drop him.”

Ori bit the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming as the troll threw Bilbo at Kili. He watched Kili’s sword glint in the firelight as it fell to the ground, and then there was a chorus of shouts and battle-cries as the company rushed out of the trees.

Ori had had a regular target practice regimen over the years as Balin’s apprentice, but nothing had prepared him for the pandemonium of actual battle. One moment, he saw Thorin, Gloin, and Nori attacking the troll that hadn’t spoken; the next, Nori caught an arm swipe to his midsection that lifted him clear off his feet, into the air, and sailing over the campfire. Not too far away, Dwalin and Bombur were hacking away at the troll that had had Bilbo in his clutches.

There were too many dwarves to keep track of, and the three trolls were surrounding the campfire, which made it hard to focus on one at a time. Growling in frustration, Ori backed up out of the fray, only to see Dori jog from one troll to another. Following behind him, Ori loaded his slingshot with one of the rocks from his pouch and pulled his arm back, aiming for the eyes of the nearest troll. He let fly, only for the troll to duck under the shot, his massive arms swinging around at three of the dwarves as it roared.

Cursing under his breath, Ori loaded another rock. He wasn’t sure what made him look to his right, but he saw the skinny troll lift up a very familiar silhouette, the massive paw grabbing the top of his brother’s head.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Ori snarled to himself, taking aim and letting fly.

The rock sailed, and smacked into the troll’s left eye. Ori felt a rush of satisfaction as the troll squealed in pain, and grinned when he saw Nori getting dropped, but realized even if he had helped Nori, he’d done exactly what Dori had told him _not_ to do and gotten himself noticed. Worse, he’d wandered into the middle of the fray, so when he turned and ran, keeping his gaze on the troll chasing him, he yelped loudly when a massive hand landed on his head and picked him up off the ground.

There was a rough shout that Ori thought he recognized, followed by a silhouette diving over the roaring campfire and tucking into ball. A figure in blue, with long, flowing hair, ran forward, stepped onto the curled dwarf’s back, and leaped into the air, his sword flashing in the firelight as he sliced at the arm holding Ori aloft.

Ori yelped again when he fell on the ground, landing with a painful thump on his backside. He barely had the presence of mind to roll out of the way as dwarves swarmed on the troll who’d picked him up. He managed to get himself into a lucky bit of shadow before he loaded his slingshot again. His getting grabbed had been the second time a troll had picked one of them up. If the trolls kept using their size to their advantage, Ori needed to be ready to distract them again, and quickly.

One of the dwarves was a blur of angry roaring and a heavy war hammer swinging at knees, legs, and even connecting with the side of one troll’s face, a shower of teeth flying out as the troll’s head turned with the blow. Ori realized it was Dwalin the same moment another large hand grabbed him by the front of his jacket, and started to pick him up.

Fili was there, his hair flashing gold in the firelight, his swords whirling as he darted in, slashing at the fingers holding Ori’s jacket. There was a loud squeal from the troll, and Ori was flying through the air, landing on his back a few feet away.

“Ori!” Dori shouted, and then there was Dori’s hand, sweaty but warm, lifting him up off the ground.

“Bilbo!” Kili shouted. He was about to jump forward, presumably in Bilbo’s direction, when Thorin threw an arm over his chest to stop him.

Ori looked around quickly and found that the troll who’d been dangling Bilbo by one leg at the start of the battle was now holding him in the air again, this time with the troll who hadn’t spoken. As Ori fumbled for his slingshot, loading another rock, he could see that the two trolls were holding the hobbit’s arms and legs, spreading his limbs apart. Bilbo’s eyes were wide with panic.

“Lay down your arms!” the troll bellowed. “Or we’ll rip his off!”

Ori gritted his teeth, keeping his slingshot trained on the troll who wasn’t speaking. Given how slimy Bilbo looked, it was entirely possible that he was slick enough to squirm free and fall to the ground, and they could swarm back in again. Since they were lined up instead of surrounding the campfire, the trolls were easier to keep track of--

Ori glanced at Thorin, waiting for the signal.

Breathing heavily, Thorin reversed his blade, and sunk it into the ground. Dwalin’s war hammer flipped, and landed with a thump as well. Kili shoved his sword into the ground. And one by one, there were more sounds of the company dropping their weapons.

Frustrated at having been beaten -- that they weren’t able to get Bilbo out of this, that they wouldn’t be able to fight their way out of this -- Ori threw his slingshot to the ground in disgust.

***

Being rotated on a spit, Ori felt, was one of those situations that was too fantastical to be believed. If he had been a character in one of his romance novels, this would've been the perfect time for the hero to think about his life and his choices.

Of course, because he wasn’t a character in one of his romance novels, Ori was too nauseous to do anything more than keep from vomiting on either himself or his fellow dwarves.

Ori had had a brief moment of embarrassed horror when he’d first been tied to the spit, because of _course_ the dwarf whose head was resting between Ori’s spread legs was none other than Dwalin. To make matters worse, his soulmate had wrapped his large, warm hands around Ori’s shins, and every once in a while, Ori could feel strong fingers gripping his legs.

But then the spit turned again, and Ori was too sick and dizzy to give a damn.

His awareness made another valiant effort to take stock of the situation when the trolls had paused in turning the spit to argue with the hobbit about the best way to cook dwarves. When Bilbo declared that all of the company had been infected with parasites, Ori had the presence of mind to squeak out something about being riddled with them before he had another bout of dizziness, and managed to choke back dinner from a few hours ago.

The spit finally, mercifully, stopped turning when there was a tremendous crack of stone splitting apart. Sunlight streamed into the clearing, and the three trolls turned to stone in a matter of seconds.

When the coast was clear, someone put out the fire, and then there were hands blessed by Mahal himself. The ropes came off first, and there were the thumps of dwarves falling off the log and hopping off of hot ashes. There were more hands, now holding him, half-carrying him, half-dropping him to the ground and shoving him away from the dying embers of the campfire.

Ori tottered four steps, fell to his hands and knees, and vomited.

He dimly registered a warm hand on his back, but all he could manage was a weak nod before his stomach heaved again.

“Ori--” Dwalin snapped, sounding close and moving closer. “What’s wrong?”

Ori would’ve made a rude gesture if he hadn’t needed both hands to stop himself from landing in his own vomit. He was tempted to lift his head to glare at his soulmate, but when he moved his head a few inches, the world started swooping wildly, and he closed his eyes.

“Ori--”

“Ah, lay off 'im,” Nori said, a hint of steel cutting through the laughter in his voice. “Didn’t take too kindly to getting turned on a spit, is all.”

“ _Thank you_ , Nori, for that stunning assessment,” Dori interjected from right behind Ori, brimming with enough fussiness that Ori felt like he was about to be on the receiving end of a lecture. “Now, would the _pair of you_ step away and give Ori some air?”

Ori caught a whiff of the vomit he was facing, and groaned weakly.

“There, there, Ori,” Dori swooped in with a soft murmur. Warm, strong hands reached under his shoulders, picking him up as if he weighed no more than a kitten. There was a slow, gentle progress away from the ground, and Ori was staring into Dori’s hazel eyes.

“Dori,” he rasped.

“Shhh,” Dori said gently, his arms shifting around Ori until he was half-carrying him. “Don’t try to speak. Let’s have you sit down for a minute, make sure that you’re all right.”

Ori managed a tight nod before he squeezed his eyes shut.

“Dizzy?”

Ori tried to give a yes-sounding groan.

Dori maneuvered him gently to sit down on a fallen log, wrapping a warm arm around his back and guiding his head to lay on Dori’s broad shoulder.

“I’ll get sick--”

“It’s nothing that won’t wash out,” Dori murmured softly. “Just keep your eyes shut and concentrate on breathing in and out. Slowly, now.”

Ori didn’t know how long he sat there, trying to feel like his stomach had finally settled down and his head wasn’t going to fly off his shoulders at any moment. There were a few times when he heard Dori speaking to someone, but when he finally opened his eyes, the two of them had been left alone.

“Feeling any better now?” Dori asked gently.

Ori nodded gingerly, wincing a little as his head started throbbing. “I don’t think I’ll be sick again,” he managed. “Where is everyone?”

“Thorin and Mister Gandalf think that the trolls had some sort of cave nearby, and everyone went to go look for it,” Dori answered, gesturing vaguely in one direction. Ori could dimly hear voices from the rest of the company, so they couldn’t have gotten too far off.

“Ah ah, you need to stay put,” Dori ordered, sternness coming back into his tone. “Being dizzy on top of being sick from all that turning isn’t going to do your balance any favors.”

Ori shot him a half-hearted frown. “I should be there in case they find something interesting.”

“You can draw it later when we make camp,” Dori said firmly.

“What about the cave?” Ori pointed out. When Dori didn’t have a ready answer for that, Ori wobbled to his feet, and made his way over to where Dori had pointed. He could see Bifur investigating some old animal bones, and a few of the others putting their armor back on or checking their weapons over.

Dori shot him an annoyed look when he caught up. “No one’s left you behind, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Ori wanted to roll his eyes, but knew that the resulting headache wouldn’t have been worth the effort. “Then where are the ponies?”

Dori opened his mouth to say something stern, but then deflated as he looked around himself. “I’m not sure. Balin? Do you know where the ponies have gone?”

Balin looked up from his inspection of his satchel, and snorted. “They’re not far. Bombur is watching over them now, I believe.”

Dori looked at Ori with an expression that clearly said, ‘see?’

Ori checked a sigh and gingerly sat down on a large rock, letting the sounds of leaves rustling in the trees flow over him. His gaze roamed over the dwarves who were present until he realized he was looking for one face in particular. Part of him wanted to ask out loud if Dwalin was in the troll cave with Thorin and the others, but part of him was so annoyed for wanting to know that he folded his arms over his chest and glared at nothing.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Dwalin leave the cave mouth, followed by Thorin, Nori, Gloin, and Bofur, with Gandalf bringing up the rear. While Gandalf hung back in order to give something to Bilbo, Dwalin and Thorin were standing near each other, talking in low voices and exchanging a dark look.

As Ori watched, Thorin stiffened, and then barked out, “Something’s coming!”

That’s when Ori noticed that the rustling of leaves that he’d mistaken for birds was actually something large crashing through the underbrush.

“Hurry now!” Gandalf shouted, drawing a sword that Ori hadn’t seen before. “Arm yourselves!”

Ori managed to get to his feet, pulling his slingshot from his belt while Dori drew his sword again.

Ori turned to the sound of the noise, pulling a rock from his pocket.

“Thieves!” a new voice shouted.

Suddenly, a herd of enormous rabbits burst out of the underbrush, dragging a sled behind them. The rider was a Man -- or at least, Man-sized -- with brown robes and a hat to rival Bofur’s. He also didn’t care about who he was about to trample in the process, as his sled stopped right in the middle of the company.

“Fire!” the strange Man shouted. “Murder!”

And, of course, because reality was even stranger than anything Ori could have written, Gandalf said in an oddly affectionate tone, “Radagast!” and sheathed his new blade.

Ori blinked. When he saw that Gandalf was moving closer to the newcomer and looking completely calm (if possibly a little annoyed), Ori blinked again.

“This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever,” Ori murmured blankly, feeling a bit stunned at what was happening before him.

The rest of the company stared at the two wizards, looking as baffled as Ori felt, as Radagast proved him right by talking about a thought on the tip of his tongue, and then saying it was a stick insect instead.

It was at that moment that Ori remembered that he’d heard that name before, when it was pouring buckets of rain as they left the Shire, and Gandalf had talked about the different wizards that were in the world. Radagast had been the last one in the short list, and one who watched over plants and animals.

Gandalf had neglected to mention that his fellow wizard’s idea of watching over plants and animals included keeping stick insects in his mouth like it was nothing unusual, and wearing bird droppings on his face.

As Gandalf and Radagast wandered off a short distance to talk to each other, it seemed like the tension had bled out of the air, leaving everyone looking a bit silly brandishing their weapons when there was nothing to fight. Finally, Thorin shook his head at Dwalin, and then Fili and Kili visibly relaxed, and soon everyone went back to muttering to each other and sheathing their weapons. Ori took the chance to sit down again on some kind of mossy log, and nodded to Bombur, who sat next to him.

He quickly looked at Bombur again with a frown. “Who’s watching the ponies?”

Bombur looked startled. “No one right now? I came when I heard all the commotion.”

Ori got to his feet. “Then where are they?”

Bombur pointed up at the ridge where Dori was standing. “Right over there. They’re pretty good about staying where you leave them, though.”

“As long as there aren’t any trolls to steal them out from under Fili and Kili’s noses,” Ori muttered, dusting off his tunic.

He didn’t wait for Bombur to answer, but instead headed over to Dori. “I’ll be with the ponies,” he said quickly.

“Ori, wait a minute,” Dori said, sounding startled. “You need to stay close--”

“Someone needs to keep an eye on the ponies,” Ori objected.

“Aye, young Ori speaks true,” Bifur said from where he stood nearby. “If it would set thy mind at ease, Master Dori, I shall accompany him in his watch.”

To Ori’s surprise, Dori blushed a little and when he spoke, he sounded flustered. “Oh, well, if you’re keeping an eye on him--”

Ori rolled his eyes and headed over the ridge into the brighter sunshine. Sure enough, just like Bombur had said, the ponies were placidly standing around, the saddles and some of the saddlebags having been returned to their backs. Ori had a moment of wondering when anyone had had the time to find them and ready them for the day’s journey, but figured that he’d taken more time than he’d thought to recover from being nauseous.

Bifur stood nearby, gripping his boar spear and looking solemn as his dark eyes roamed over the animals. His lips moved for a moment before he grunted and nodded to himself.

“Am I the only one who thinks that real life is stranger than stories?” Ori asked out loud, not really expecting an answer.

Bifur chuckled, sounding softer than the maniacal laughter he’d let out when they were in Bag End. “That is the way of things. If it be some consolation to thee, life has a way of turning the fantastical into the ordinary.” He nodded to the ponies. “Take these beasts, for example.”

Ori frowned, looking from Bifur to the ponies as if they would be able to explain Bifur’s reasoning. “What about them?” he asked slowly.

“When the trolls set upon them, they did not flee before a predator,” Bifur said. “In fact, they stayed and allowed themselves to be taken. It was only during the heat of battle that they stayed true to their nature and fled at the first hope of escape.”

Ori blinked. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He frowned back at the ponies. “How come we were able to find them again?”

Bifur’s grin looked just the slightest bit unhinged. “My skill at tracking is most keen. It hath been decades since I had occasion to use it, but it returned when I was on their scent. It was not long ere I reclaimed them.”

In the face of Bifur’s pride, Ori couldn’t help frowning again. “So, they didn’t go all that far?”

Bifur shook his head. “Nay, not far at all. Because these beasts do not rely on stealth to evade predators, their tracks were as easy to see as faults in gemstone.”

“So… does this mean that they’re magic ponies?”

Bifur considered this for the moment, and then shrugged philosophically. “If they are, we must hope such magic lasts.”

There was a long howl, and in seconds, the ponies had scattered. Ori found himself thinking that they were really quite sensible for magic ponies before he realized that those same ponies had taken nearly all of their supplies with them when they fled.

“It looks like it’s run out,” Ori said dryly. He turned back to Bifur, and was surprised to see how vacant the older dwarf’s eyes looked. “Bifur?”

Bifur came to himself with a start, gripping his boar spear more tightly. “Come. We must return to the others.” He turned and immediately followed his own order.

Ori trailed after him after a moment of surprise. “But what about the ponies?” he asked quickly.

“The ponies hath a better chance of survival than we at present!” Bifur snapped. “Come!”

They crested the ridge just in time to see the company gathered around, with the bodies of two monsters -- like wolves but much, _much_ larger -- strewn around them.

“Who did you tell about your quest, beyond your kin?” Gandalf demanded, advancing on Thorin.

“No one,” Thorin said, sounding breathless. Judging from the state of the monster next to him, Ori was fairly sure he had taken the creature out with one blow.

“Who did you tell?” Gandalf shouted.

“No one, I swear!” Thorin shouted back. “What in Durin’s name is going on?”

“You are being hunted,” Gandalf said, looking around the small valley.

“We have to get out of here,” Dwalin hissed.

“We can’t!” Ori piped up, trying to make sure he was heard. “We have no ponies! They’ve bolted!”

“I’ll draw them off,” Radagast said firmly.

Ori turned to the odd-looking wizard, wondering what kind of magic he had at his disposal that could handle creatures like the ones laying near Thorin and Dwalin.

“These are Gundabad wargs,” Gandalf said impatiently. “They will outrun you.”

“These are Rhosgobel rabbits,” Radagast returned, his smile turning sly. “I’d like to see them _try_.”

There was apparently a large difference between Rhosgobel rabbits and any other sort of rabbit that they’d come across, because as soon as Radagast got on his sled, they were off like a shot.

“Quick!” Gandalf snapped, looking around at the company. “This way!”

And that was how they started running for their lives.

Ori was sure that when he recounted this in his retelling of the quest, it would only take maybe a paragraph. Possibly two if he included details about the horrible thorny bushes that were everywhere that the company was trying to step in order to get away from the wargs and orcs, or the sun beating down on them as they ran.

While he was trying to survive the experience, however, Ori only remembered stumbling at one point and feeling a shooting pain lance through his right calf, along with how his pack had seemingly tripled in weight as they tried to keep running. Radagast had apparently forgotten what he was supposed to be doing, because he led the wargs on a merry chase through a rock formation, laughing maniacally and urging their pursuers onwards after him.

After the second time the company had had to redirect their course through the rock formation -- when Ori had been so focused on running that he hadn’t noticed when the rest of the company had stopped, and Thorin had yanked him back by his collar, shouting, “Ori, no!” -- Ori was starting to get sick of this wizard who was supposed to be helping them.

After a few more twists and turns, Gandalf finally had them huddling against a particular large rock -- limestone, if Ori had had to guess -- when they heard a loud, snuffling sound coming from _above_ them.

Just as Ori opened his mouth to ask a question, Dori shot him a quelling look and shook his head fiercely.

Not too far away, Thorin was nodding to Kili, and then looking down at Kili’s bow.

Ori held his breath. Whoever -- or whatever -- was on top of that rock, Kili needed to take it down in one shot.

Kili always did well with hitting dummies and moving targets, but in a situation like this, when one arrow could mean the difference between staying hidden and having a chance of escaping their pursuers, and being discovered--

Kili darted away from the rock formation, took aim, and fired an arrow.

Ori squeezed his eyes tight.

A shriek of pain split the air, hurting his ears.

Another arrow flew. More shrieking.

Ori breathed quickly, his hands locking around his slingshot, trying not to scream himself.

There were a few thuds, overly loud in the silence that followed, and then an orc, large and surprisingly _fast_ , crawled out from under its wounded mount, lifting a blade that looked more like an unfinished work than a weapon.

Dwalin took a step forward, and then it felt as though the world slowed down.

His war hammer, solid and steady in both of his hands, was lifted in a sure grip, Dwalin’s body stretching to take full advantage of its weight, and swung down in a beautiful arc. It slammed into the orc’s shoulder, sending it to the ground.

The warg, which had been unnoticed by the company, had gotten up as well, but it was no match for them. Dwalin sidestepped its gnashing teeth almost casually, bringing his war hammer down on the warg’s head with a satisfying crunch.

The orc recovered enough to get up, but with Bifur running the orc through the back with his boar-spear, Thorin slashing at his chest, and Dwalin’s war hammer slamming into its spine, it crumpled to the earth and didn’t move.

Through the echoes of the valley, they could hear some kind of foul speech as if it were ricocheting off of the rocks, and then another unearthly howl went up again, this time heading in their direction.

“We have to run!” Ori gasped, startled out of his momentary reverie.

“What?” Nori demanded from not too far away.

“Move!” Gandalf shouted, looking around quickly. “Run!”

And off they went. Instead of the meandering course they’d taken when Radagast was supposed to be distracting the orcs and wargs, Gandalf led them on a straightforward path, dodging around bushes and climbing down hills and half-buried rocks as quickly and safely as possible.

At one point, Ori remembered Gloin shouting, “There they are!” but it seemed that Gandalf wasn’t fazed by their left flank being cut off.

As they changed course, Ori couldn’t help noticing that they were descending more often than they were ascending. “Shouldn’t we--” he had to take a moment to breathe before continuing, “--be going up, not down?”

Dori shook his head. “Ask when we’re not going to be killed,” he managed.

Finally, after descending into a low, flat area, surrounded by pale grasses, with a small rock formation to one side, they were finally surrounded.

“There’s more coming!” Kili bellowed, readying an arrow.

Ori gritted his teeth, readying his slingshot. As he watched, more orc riders appeared over hills, the wargs’ tails lashing around like an animal about to pounce on unsuspecting prey.

“We’re surrounded!” Fili shouted, his voice hitting a higher register in his panic.

Ori had to stop himself from snapping that they were all very aware that they were surrounded, _thank you, Fili_. It was unkind, for starters. And for another, he didn’t want his last words to his friend to be a sarcastic remark.

An arrow flew through the air, sinking into the throat of one of the orcs.

“Where’s Gandalf?” someone shouted.

“He’s abandoned us!” Dwalin bellowed.

Ori gritted his teeth, bringing up his slingshot and focusing on one of the orcs -- a scrawny one with glowing, red eyes, and some kind of black armor that looked almost like grasping fingers. His slingshot shaking, he let the stone fly, only to watch as the rock bounced off the side of the warg’s head, falling harmlessly to the ground.

That’s when he felt himself start to panic.

Ori started to step back, to try to retreat towards the group, to not feel so wide open and defenseless on this open ground.

“Hold your ground!” Thorin bellowed.

The roars of the wargs, the shouts of the orcs -- they were like the echoes in the deepest caverns back home. So many voices shouting different syllables all bleeding together into a cacophony of harsh noise.

Ori could see some of the orcs looking triumphant. The noise was as much a scare tactic as them advancing in numbers. If ten could sound like a hundred, what would be more demoralizing than facing overwhelming odds with no hope of making it out alive?

Through the echoes and squeals, Ori suddenly heard one voice above everything else.

“This way, you fools!”

“Come on! Move!” Thorin shouted soon afterward.

As if they had been released from a spell, the company turned and ran for the rock formation. As Ori ran for it, gritting his teeth against the pain in his calf, he heard Thorin shout again.

“Quickly! All of you!”

For a wild moment, Ori thought that they were going to start scaling the rock formation to try to wait out the orcs at the top of it, but then he saw Bofur’s hat disappear into the ground behind a rock, and out of sight.

Ori ran harder.

When he reached Thorin, he could see a dark hole between two slabs of stone. Without thinking, without waiting for anybody, he jumped in feet first.

There were a few bumps, and his palms took a bit of a sanding before he yanked his hands up, but soon, he was rolling on hard limestone, only to abruptly stop against someone’s legs. A firm hand helped him to his feet just in time for him to move out of the way as more dwarves slid down the sharp incline.

Looking around, Ori wondered where Gandalf was before he heard, “Seven-- eight-- nine--” from one side of the small cave they’d found themselves in.

Nori slid down, looking spectacularly unfazed by the whole experience.

Dori, on the other hand, yanked him into a fierce hug before holding him out at arm’s length and checking him over for injuries.

“I’m fine,” Ori managed, weakly flapping at Dori’s hands. “Just winded.”

Dori snorted, yanking him back into another hug before hustling him over to one side, out of the way of the rest of the company sliding down.

Gandalf didn’t even have time to count to fourteen before a high, clear blast from a horn sounded throughout the small cave, causing everyone to turn their faces towards the sunlight they had just escaped.

Orcs and wargs let out shrieks of pain and shouts.

Ori frowned, trying to place where the screams were coming from. It hadn’t been close enough to the rock formation for it to be very loud, but the echoing nature of the open grasslands made it difficult to figure out exactly where... “Someone’s attacking them from the east,” he blurted out.

“What?” Nori demanded.

Ori’s eyes popped open at his brother’s hand nudging his chest. “The east. Whoever’s attacking them.” He paused, frowning as he concentrated again. “There. The screams are closer now, nearly on top of us.” One warg let out a particularly hideous squeal of pain, which made Ori wince. “Can’t you hear it?”

Nori snorted. “I can hear them dying, all right,” he muttered. He sounded like he was about to add more when the body of an orc suddenly tumbled down the sharp incline. Everyone quickly got out of the way, only for the corpse to land at Balin’s feet.

Gandalf swung his staff downwards defensively as Balin nudged the body with his bladed mace.

When the body didn’t move, Thorin pushed his way through the group and knelt down, ripping something from the orc’s neck. Whatever it was he found, he held it up to his face and turned it in his hand. It looked like a small, silver arrowhead, covered in black blood.

“Elves,” Thorin said in disgust, throwing it down on the cave floor.

Ori was about to try to pick up the arrowhead when he looked up at Dwalin’s voice coming from the back of the cave. It was then that Ori noticed that their hiding place hadn’t been just a small cave where they could hide, but had what was hopefully an escape tunnel leading away from the open grassland above.

“I cannot see where the pathway leads!” Dwalin shouted, sounding angry. Considering the day they’d had after the trolls, Ori couldn’t really blame him. “Do we follow it, or no?”

Bofur, the closest to Dwalin at the rear of the cave, shouted back before anyone else could think of a reply. “Follow it, of course!”

It was a testament to just how much the company wanted to be rid of the grasslands that they went without waiting for Thorin’s orders.

The tunnel was less of a tunnel, and more of an open, if narrow, chasm. Afternoon sunlight filtered down from the surface above, revealing jagged rock above their heads that narrowed into a pinch that no one would’ve been able to fall through if they tried. From the floor to the pinched rock above, it was easily high enough for Gandalf to walk comfortably, which seemed more than a little unusual, given that rock wasn’t usually so uniform in its shifting and settling. Ori could hear at least two or three dwarves knocking their boots against the sides of the tunnel to sense the stone, trying to gauge just how the rock was formed and how stable it was.

After traveling quite some distance, the narrow tunnel widened, revealing a ledge where water gushed from an eroded opening in the wall. There were naturally-created steps, and then--

Ori’s eyes widened. Dimly, he let himself wander over to stand next to Dori, taking in his brother’s soothing presence. His boot landed unnoticed in a small flowing stream of ice-cold water.

He didn’t think that he could have captured what lay before him if he had all the inks and canvas and paints that Ered Luin had to offer. The mountain -- a beautiful, soft grey, dotted with trees whose leaves were burned yellow-green by the just-setting sun -- was dotted by a number of rivers cascading down the sides, wearing the rock away to a smooth polish. The city, filled with white roofs that complemented the rock, was perched on stable ledges and filled with looping, swirling designs that looked deceptively flimsy.

“The Valley of Imladris,” Gandalf declared, sounding very pleased with himself. “In the common tongue, it’s known by another name.”

“Rivendell,” their burglar said in a soft, reverent tone.

Ori breathed in deeply, turning to say something to Dori, only to find that the warm, solid presence he had been standing next to had been Dwalin, who watched him out of the corner of his eye, his burly forearms resting on the head of his war hammer and looking none too pleased with the view.


	6. Rivendell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, they've got something resembling a roof over their heads. But the most important thing? There's a _library_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many thanks go to Penniform and ForAllLove for their beta-reading. This chapter wouldn't have been nearly as good as it is without you two to help me out. Special thanks go out to Elsajeni and Kailthia, who've also helped. Thank you all so much!
> 
> ETA: (4/5/16) This chapter has [fan art](http://nerdeeart.tumblr.com/post/141861262121/nerdeeart-this-is-for-the-wonderful-leaper182) by the amazing [nerdeeart](nerdeeart.tumblr.com). If you have a tumblr, reblog the art! If you don't have a tumblr, send an ask and tell her how amazing it is! <3

Ori stared at the leaf of lettuce between his thumb and forefinger, trying to focus on the crisp edges, the vibrant color, and not sink back into memories of when he was small, and the food Dori had been able to afford had been constantly in danger of going off.

“Try it,” Dori urged. “Just a mouthful.”

Ori turned the lettuce leaf over, and finally shook his head. “I don’t like green food,” he muttered.

Dori sighed. “Ori, we are _guests_ \--”

Ori wasn’t in the mood for the oncoming lecture. “And we don’t want to insult our hosts.”

“Now, see here--” Dori snapped, keeping his voice low. When an elf passed by with a ewer, Dori smiled pleasantly at him (Ori thought it was a him) before turning back to Ori with a scowl. “Just because you don’t like what’s put in front of you doesn’t mean that I’m going to tolerate this sort of behavior from you. You’re going to eat it and like it, and if you can’t be bothered to be _grateful_ that we’re being fed instead of being turned out on our ears, you can at least _pretend_.”

Ori couldn’t help giving his eldest brother a sour look. _He_ hadn’t liked having been circled by a troop of heavily-armed elves on horseback anymore than Dori had, but at least _he_ wasn’t taking out his frustration out on anybody else.

“Oi,” Nori called from across the table. “Lay off ‘im, would you?”

Dori swelled in knitted, purple outrage. “I hardly think that I need to take advice from _you_.”

Nori snorted. “I dunno about you, _brother mine_ , but I remember eating some pretty dodgy stuff way back when.” He shot Ori a look that was almost gentle. “Besides, these elves have gear made from animals. They’ve got meat around here somewhere. Y’just gotta know where to look.”

“Well, that’s no excuse,” Dori said, trying to sound firm in the face of Nori’s logic. “We’re still guests, and we should be polite.”

Ori was sure that Dori had launched into a lecture about minding their manners and being grateful to be guests and so on, but he turned his attention to their surroundings. The elves were dressed in browns and golds, looking like trees in autumn themselves in their finery, all the while walking around the table, refilling goblets and playing soft songs without any sort of a beat.

The rest of the company didn’t look all that happy about the food themselves, given that Dwalin was pawing at one bowl, and Oin was inspecting a bit of onion at the end of a knife. He heard Kili and Bofur at the other end of the table, talking animatedly about something before Bofur clapped his hands and climbed up top of a stone plinth. He managed to save the dinner from being completely tedious by singing a rousing song that had all of the company clapping in short order. The only one who wasn’t stamping his feet or pounding the table approvingly was Bilbo, who’d turned a bright shade of red and tried to make himself look as invisible as possible, all the while eating two or three of the bowls of greenery without pause.

After Bofur’s attempt to sing for their supper got more than a few offended looks from the elves -- who probably didn’t appreciate the food that had been thrown around afterwards -- they were politely, if firmly, shown to their quarters, which consisted of a large room with ridiculously high beds, and a broad balcony that faced west.

Ori couldn’t say that he was surprised when the company to a dwarf headed for the balcony over Bilbo’s loud objections.

He _was_ surprised -- though he really shouldn’t have been -- when  The Lovers’ Quandary made an appearance after everyone had washed their laundry and had set up camp for the night.

“Not that again!” Ori groaned loudly, shooting Kili an irritated look. “Didn’t you bring anything else to read that isn’t a literary travesty?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Bilbo said, sounding entirely too hopeful for Ori’s peace of mind. “What’s going on?”

Ori turned to him, still thoroughly disgusted. “Kili brought a silly romance with him from home, and he _insists_ on reading it,” he grumbled.

“Ori, _behave_ ,” Dori said from nearby. How he managed to look as fussy and intimidating as usual while only wearing his underclothes, Ori would never know.

Bofur chuckled before addressing Bilbo with a conspiratorial wink. “Don’t pay Ori no mind -- it’s a good yarn to tell around a fire. Not your typical love story, but it’s funny enough.”

Grumbling, Ori headed over to his satchel to find his journal, bumping into a Kili armed with sad puppy eyes and a pout that most likely got him anything he wanted when he was a dwarfling. “You don’t really think the story’s that _bad_ , do you?”

Ori sighed. While he himself couldn’t bear to hear it because he could hear all of the flaws in the story as well as the fact that dwarves he _knew_ were actually reading his work _out loud_ within earshot of his _soulmate_ , Kili hadn’t known any of that. Still, the idea of a hobbit learning about dwarven soulmates was a bit too much to handle.

“It’s not the story itself, though it could use a great _deal_ of improvements,” Ori murmured.

“Then what?” Kili cut in with a frown.

“Do you really think that this Skriff person would want a hobbit to learn about soulmates from one of his stories?” Ori tried to sound as offhand about his pen name as possible, but Kili was still frowning.

“You’re worried about _that_?” Kili scoffed. “Come on -- I bet Skriff wouldn’t care if a hobbit heard one of his tales.”

“How would you know?” Ori couldn’t help feeling a bit offended. Kili had never actually _met_ Skriff, and here he was, making assumptions about him. It was almost tempting to tell him the truth, just to see the look on his face. “He might be a traditionalist."

Kili blinked at him before he started laughing. "A traditionalist? Writing this stuff? No way--” He cut himself off, and Ori could see the moment an idea came into Kili’s head. “Hey, he might even _like_ the idea of a hobbit spreading his fame far and wide! Imagine if everyone in Arda knew who Skriff was after a few decades! That'd be something."

Ori fought down a wave of stunned dismay. The idea that his literary persona would become _well-known_ outside of Ered Luin was more than a little horrifying. If he was going to have any sort of legacy, he would’ve preferred being the dwarf who had helped reclaim the Royal Library of Erebor and had dutifully recorded the journey to reclaim the mountain, not the dwarf famous for aggressively-written romance novels because his own relationship with his soulmate hadn’t been gemstones and finery.

Ori was about to loudly object to spreading Skriff’s fame far and wide when he heard Bofur summarizing what the company had read out loud thus far. He turned, trying to think of something to stop Bofur from saying anything further, when Bilbo spoke up.

“Oh, that sounds like a bit of poetry we have back home,” Bilbo offered, looking happy to be able to add something to the conversation. “Particularly the bit about Tyban having to choose between two people.”

“Poetry, eh?” Bofur asked, perking up. “How about some, then?”

“It’s not going to have the same kind of beat as our stuff does,” Nori offered from where he was darning a sock. “Trust me.”

Bofur shrugged. “I want to hear some.” He turned back to Bilbo with an encouraging smile. “I’m sure it’ll be grand.”

Bilbo looked a bit flustered before he frowned, closing his eyes as he tried to remember. “I… can? No, I… ah, I _could_. I could die tomorrow after having loved you.”

That earned more than a few raised eyebrows. Bofur’s eyes widened, the flecks of green and hazel catching the glow from the firelight. Ori sat down next to the fire and pulled out his journal. Whatever Bilbo was reciting, it had a promising start.

“To have met you…” Bilbo continued, still frowning. “And held you in my arms….” Ori could tell he was dissatisfied, but he kept going. “How could I… watch you with another, knowing the sweetness of your kisses? To see you torn between the hills of home and your… willful heart? Hmm, that’s not quite right.”

Ori was more than a little surprised that Bilbo Baggins, who’d shown himself to be a bit of a wordsmith while they were traveling through the Shire, couldn’t recite poetry all that well. He winced sympathetically when Bilbo continued the recitation when anyone else would’ve stopped a few lines in. Bilbo was still frowning with his eyes closed, struggling to find the right word, and even the hobbit could hear when a line didn’t scan very well. Still, when the hobbit finally stopped, Ori gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

Gloin looked up from drawing his whetstone across his walking axe. "Sounds a bit… unfinished," he offered kindly.

Bilbo shook his head with an apologetic look. "It sounds much better in Hobbitish, trust me."

Ori’s eyebrows rose. "Hobbitish?" As secretive as the hobbits had seemed while they were passing through the Shire, Ori hadn’t thought they would have a secret language as well. Then again, it stood to reason that they might have need of a language to talk to each other while in the presence of outsiders.

As Ori thought about it further, something else occurred to him. “Wait.” When Bilbo turned to look at him, Ori blurted out, “You were translating the poem as you recited it?”

The work had been a surprisingly lackluster effort when Bilbo had been trying to piece together a poem without preparation, but Ori could better appreciate a remarkable feat of quick, if rough-hewn, translation that was done without quill and parchment to aid the process along. Ori himself had tried his hand at translation work at the very tail-end of his apprenticeship with Balin, and while he’d done all right with translating Khuzdul into Common and back, his Sindarin was about as rough as Bilbo’s translation of his Hobbit language, and that was with a few sheets of parchment handy.

Bilbo looked a bit embarrassed. “It’s not as good as my usual translation work, of course, but it would have lost a lot of the layered meanings behind it if I had done it word-for-word.”

“Forget the poem,” Kili demanded impatiently, looking more eager than before. Ori was positive he’d thought of something and was just bursting to tell everyone what it was. “Go back to the Hobbitish.”

Bilbo’s fussiness returned with a sour look at Kili. "It's a language only we hobbits know, much like your Dwarvish. We generally don't speak it in front of outsiders."

Ori frowned. "Then why are you telling us that it exists?"

Bilbo tried to shrug casually, but Ori could tell that he was a bit nervous about being put on the spot, especially with more of the company watching him curiously. "Well, you couldn't very well hide Dwarvish from me, could you?” he offered. “Not with Bifur there speaking it, and everyone else muttering when they think I can’t hear them."

Most of the company traded looks. Ori had a feeling that they’d been in Ered Luin for so long without so much as seeing any other race, be they Men or elves, that some of them had probably forgotten to keep their voices down or to speak in the common tongue instead. Bofur seemed to be the only one who looked amused, smiling up at Bilbo as he roasted a sausage.

Fili, who was carefully polishing one of the knives he kept tucked into his boots, looked up. "So, what's it sound like?"

Bilbo looked around before he found Fili, and then wagged a finger at him. "Ah ah ah, I'm not going to speak it in front of you lot unless you teach me some Dwarvish."

Before anyone could object, Thorin left his post at the balcony railing where he’d been unofficially been standing watch. He headed for the fire, probably to get some food, but the look Ori saw him give the hobbit was worse than any he’d ever gotten from Dori. "Our language is sacred to us. We don't teach it to outsiders. At all."

Bilbo’s eyes widened, looking darker in the growing shadows of evening. "All right then..."

Ori couldn’t blame him. While his first look at Thorin Oakenshield had been when the exiled King Under the Mountain had worn only a bedsheet while chasing his nephews, he had been physically imposing even then. Getting a dose of Thorin at his most disapproving at close range would’ve struck fear in anyone who didn’t know him well.

"Oh, hey!” Kili piped up suddenly, sounding as if he’d gotten one of his ‘brilliant’ ideas. Ori wasn’t sure if he needed to stop him or let it run its course. “Bilbo, do you write it down? Your Hobbit language, I mean?"

Ori had a sinking feeling he should’ve stopped Kili, even as he (and a few others in the company) stared at Kili in complete bafflement.

Bilbo, unaware of the oncoming minecart wreck hurtling toward him, looked mildly offended. "Of course we write it down. How would we keep records otherwise?"

To Ori’s surprise, Kili turned to Bofur and said, "Bofur, show him your little book!"

Ever since Bofur had shown Ori the small wooden book that he’d carved during a soulspeaking, it had become a topic of intense, if private speculation among the older dwarves in the company. Discussing another dwarf’s soulcraft in public was considered incredibly rude, Ori had discovered, so he hadn’t been able to learn why it was so intriguing outside of the obvious differences between Bofur’s soulcraft and just about every other dwarf’s.

Any talking or laughing around the fire ceased. The company were trading loaded looks, and even Bifur and Bombur were startled. Bofur, looking a bit surprised himself, was shooting Kili a bewildered glance.

Ori decided that enough was enough. The mood had taken an ominous turn, and he really didn’t like the idea of the whole company getting chilly with one another, especially over something as private as soulcraft. Ori cleared his throat pointedly, and said, "Kili, that's not something you just--"

"I'm sorry, what's going on?" Bilbo asked. Judging from the tense quality of his voice, he had picked up on the change in mood as well.

Bofur turned from Kili reluctantly, looking back at Bilbo. "Ah, just a little something..." To Ori’s astonishment, he pulled the little wooden book from his pocket and held it out to the hobbit. "Can you make anything of this?"

Bilbo frowned in confusion, accepting the book before his face lit up with a wide smile. “My favorite poem from my father's stories! Why, it looks like one of the birthday presents from either my birthday or my father's, once upon a time!” He glanced up at Bofur, still smiling. “I certainly hope this didn't cost you too much--"

Ori stared at Bilbo, completely stunned, as he rambled on obliviously. When he heard someone clearing their throat, Ori turned to find that the entire company was staring instead at Bofur. While he couldn’t fault them for being dumbfounded by this new development, Ori felt like he wanted to hide in a hole in sympathetic embarrassment. 

Ori was sure that the company was just about to turn their collective disapproval on Kili for starting it when Bilbo asked, "Oh, that's funny, why can't I turn the page?"

Bofur started where he sat, no more than a twitch, before returning his attention to Bilbo. "Because it's made of wood."

"Wood? What, you mean the whole--” Bilbo’s eyes widened before peering more closely at the carving. “Goodness!"

The dwarves kept staring. Bofur frowned at the hobbit, looking confused.

"I could've sworn this was a little book--” Bilbo said wonderingly, turning the book over in his hands and examining the finer details. “The craftsmanship is amazing!"

Bofur grinned. "Thank you.”

Ori blinked, wondering why Bofur was taking credit for it -- surely, Bilbo was going to start asking questions about how Bofur had known enough Hobbitish to carve it into a little book -- but he couldn’t figure out an answer that made any sense.

Bilbo jerked his attention back to Bofur. " _You_ made this? My word, when I get back to the Shire, I'll have to commission something--"

While Ori tried to figure out what he was witnessing, he made eye contact with Kili across the fire. Before he could think better of it, he got up, tucked his journal into the front of his cardigan, and dragged Kili by the arm, ignoring his protests. When they were far enough away from the fire to not be immediately overheard, Ori let him go and hissed, "I can't believe you _just_ did that! In front of everyone!" He glanced around until he made eye contact with Fili, and shot him a sharp look that clearly pleaded with him for help.

"Well, I figured since you didn't recognize it, and neither did Balin, maybe it was that hobbity language Mister Boggins was talking about, is all,” Kili whispered back.

Ori smacked his arm as hard as he could. "You can't just say that in front of everyone! It's like dropping your trousers and showing everyone your bum!"

Kili looked startled and a bit revolted by the idea before he shrugged again. “Bofur and Bilbo will be together, though, won’t they?” he offered weakly. “They’ll be happy, right?”

Ori felt like he was looking at himself from nearly twenty years ago. The weak hope that everything would turn out all right in the end, that Dwalin would stop sneering at him and actually say hello.

He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to smack Kili in the head, or just walk away, but all Ori knew was that he felt _tired_. “There’s no guarantee of that.”

Kili’s brown eyes narrowed with uncomfortable intensity. “...I still say that we could beat him up for you.”

“You remember that we’re in the middle of a quest, don’t you?” Ori asked dryly.

Kili shrugged. “We could do it when we get back to Ered Luin."

“Do what?” Fili asked from behind him.

Ori turned around and gave Fili an annoyed look. “Kili is still trying to take my soulmate to task for being his _charming_ self, and I’m not letting him.” He saw the moment that Fili started to speak, but Ori shook his head. “And neither are you, for that matter. Now, since neither of you can actually carry out your threats of bodily harm since you don’t know who he _is_ , I’m going to the library.”

“The library?” Fili asked with a frown.

“Yes, the library,” he said evenly, drawing himself up and bracing himself for the argument he could feel was about to begin. “I’m not about to lose this opportunity to work on my research.”

Fili’s expression darkened. “Elves wouldn’t have anything about dwarf culture in their library. We wouldn’t let them have it.”

Ori snorted. “If you keep frowning like that, your face is going to set that way,” he said. “And you don’t know what the elves here might have. Narvi was a friend to elves during the Second Age, after all.”

“The western gate of Moria is at least a hundred miles south of here,” Fili pointed out, still frowning. “Unless you’re saying that all that knowledge walked here when Khazad-dum fell.”

Ori rolled his eyes. “Books can’t walk by themselves. They need help. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find the books and see if they need help walking further.”

***

When Ori was escorted to the library by an elf who was more amused than suspicious of his request, he hadn’t been aware of what he would experience.

Standing between the open set of double doors revealed a room so spacious that Ori imagined it could fit battalions of soldiers and still have room to spare, if it weren’t for the shelves standing in neat rows, the dark wood looking reassuringly solid. High above, the brilliance of the setting sun shone through more windows than Ori could count, illuminating the collection in oranges, golds, and yellows.

Ori swore to himself that he would come back in the morning and sketch out the splendor spread out before him. First, there was research to be done.

Luckily, there were some similarities between the library in Ered Luin and this monument to knowledge, including a desk where an elf with hair the color of soft leather was carefully attending to a book with bookbinding thread.

He felt like a dwarfling again, summoning up the courage to walk up to the main desk at the library in Ered Luin to ask for a good book to read. This time, however, he was trying to continue his soulmates research, and this was someone who would definitely _not_ know that aspect of dwarven culture.

Clearing his throat, Ori drew himself up. “Excuse me, Master...” His voice trailed off when he suddenly realized he wasn’t sure if he was addressing an elf or an elf-maid.

The elf’s head lifted from their work in that slow, careful way that Ori had seen from the servants at dinner. When the elf spotted him, one slender eyebrow rose over blue-green eyes, looking mildly surprised.

“My apologies for interrupting your work,” Ori continued, silently ordering himself not to ask after the elf’s gender. “But I wanted to know if I might use the collection?”

The elf stared at him, drawing themselves up as though drawing all of the grace in the room around them like a cloak and standing from their seat. “Greetings, young scholar,” she replied, and it was definitely a lady because of her high, melodic tone. “I am Istimiel. How may I assist you?”

Ori blinked a few times, surprised that he wasn’t being laughed at or scorned outright. “I’m Ori, son of Haldi, at your service.” He bobbed a quick bow before he straightened and surreptitiously dusted the hem of his cardigan with one hand. “I was wondering what your collection might have about dwarven culture.”

Istimiel’s lips twitched, as though fighting down the wisp of a smile. “Is there an aspect of dwarven culture that interests you, Master Ori?”

Ori found himself with a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, he was more than familiar with what she was doing, having been similarly grilled by Master Hamal and other librarians back in Ered Luin in order to narrow down what books would help him best. But on the other hand, the idea of explaining such a private part of dwarven culture to an _elf_ felt like he would be violating an unspoken trust with Mahal himself, somehow.

Istimiel seemed to sense his hesitation, and nodded once. She extended an arm to a set of shelves that looked much like the rest of them and said gently, “Follow me. I believe we have some works that were penned by dwarven scholars in the First and Second Ages.”

Ori exhaled in relief, following along behind her and hoping there was some scraps of parchment he might have in order to make notes.

Ori’s boots echoed as they made their way through the shelves before Istimiel turned right, and then headed down a wide, curving flight of marble stairs that looked like plants had risen from the floor to provide handrails.

The elf finally led him to a section that looked much like the rest before plucking a few books from a shelf and offering them to him. “These few are written in the common tongue, while the rest of the collection is a few shelves down.”

Ori took a moment to carefully juggle the books in his arms, sorting them one-handed before replying, “I can read Sindarin, if that makes a difference.”

Istimiel’s eyebrows rose. “Indeed? In that case, there are some few treatises that were written in Eregion that might interest you.”

“Eregion?” Ori frowned, keeping his tone politely confused. “I’m not familiar with that place?”

She blinked before she nodded in understanding. “Ah, my apologies. Men referred to it as Hollin.”

“Oh, the different names business, of course--” Ori smiled before he realized what Istimiel was referring to. Hollin, the kingdom that traded regularly with Khazad-dum before Durin’s Bane was awakened. “ _Oh_.” He nodded quickly. “Please, yes, I’d love to see them.”

Ten minutes, a desk and chair that were slightly too tall to be comfortable, and three stacks of books later, Ori was presented with a sheaf of crisp parchment, a fresh bottle of ink, a serviceable quill, and left to his own devices.

***

If there was one thing that Ori hadn’t missed from his days of research, it was trying to juggle a stack of books in his arms that was in danger of landing in a mess on his feet. He’d just managed to reorganize his latest armload before his balancing act nearly came undone with the arrival of the last dwarf he wanted to see. Ori didn’t yelp in surprise, but only just barely.

Dwalin stood a few feet away, his arms folded across his chest as he wore a familiar scowl. “Here you are.”

Ori bristled at his soulmate’s tone. He was seventy-four _bloody_ years old, and there was only one dwarf who was allowed to address him like a misbehaving dwarfling--

Dwalin frowned at the books in Ori’s arms, one of which was threatening to make a break for freedom. “You’re going to drop one.” Blue eyes met his gaze. “May I assist you?”

Ori watched as Dwalin rescued the wayward book without waiting for an answer, silently fuming at his presumption. Suddenly, Ori remembered a particularly biting remark he’d heard Dori use once when Dori thought he hadn’t been listening.

“Be careful, Captain,” he began. At Dwalin’s quizzical look, Ori gave him a smile that he hoped would sting. “I wouldn’t want you to pull a muscle reaching for your civility.”

Dwalin blinked, his blue eyes surprised before his heavy brows lowered into a sour look. The sharp smile on his lips only added to his aura of menace. “You learn that kind of sass from Nori?”

Ori desperately wanted to wipe that grin off his soulmate’s face, but with his arms laden with books, he was stuck glaring at Dwalin. “ _Dori’s_ had to deal with all sorts in the past. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my workspace is behind you.”

Dwalin, predictably, didn’t move. “Workspace? Set up shop here already, have you?”

Ori rolled his eyes. “If I’m going to continue my research, I’m going to need a place to sit down so I can sort through all of the-- hey!”

Dwalin had placed the book in his hand on top of Ori’s stack, and then scooped the stack out of Ori’s arms without so much as a by-your-leave. He grunted in surprise before he readjusted his grip. “Where to?”

Ori glared at him, tempted to wrestle the stack from him but not wanting to risk the books. From what the librarian had said, some of them dated back to the First Age. Instead, Ori gritted his teeth. “Behind you and to the left. You’ll see it.”

By some small miracle, Dwalin turned around and followed Ori’s instructions without comment, with Ori trailing along behind him and feeling a bit silly. He’d carried his share of books in the past seventeen years -- he hadn’t needed Dwalin then, and he hadn’t needed Dwalin now.

Dwalin stopped suddenly enough that Ori nearly walked into his broad back. “Mahal’s beard, how long do you think we’re going to be _staying?_ ”

Ori rolled his eyes, walking around his soulmate and carefully retrieving the stack of books from him. “You should keep your voice down.”

Dwalin snorted, eying the oversized table and chair disparagingly. “There’s hardly anyone in here to disturb.”

Ori was surprised by the comment before he remembered that Dwalin’s mother had been a librarian. With a sigh, he began the process of taking the new stack of material one by one to the tabletop, hoping that Dwalin would realize that he was dismissed. Of course, when he glanced at his soulmate, Dwalin was glaring at him with his arms folded over his chest.

“You can report back to Thorin that I’m not dead,” Ori offered. He would’ve made a shooing motion at Dwalin, but he had a feeling if he did that, he’d been pulling back a bloody stump where his hand used to be. “I’ll be back before second watch.” He turned back to his pile of books and carefully removed Examination of Societal Norms from the stack and eased open the cover.

“You can go tell him yourself,” Dwalin grumbled, looking as immovable as a statue. “I came to fetch you.”

Ori glowered at Dwalin. “I realize it’s been a long time since you’ve seen me, but I am, in fact, seventy-four years old. Which means that unless Thorin has specifically ordered me to return to camp, where I go and what I do is my own business. Now, I have research to conduct and I don’t need a minder.”

Dwalin looked like he’d reached the end of his patience. “What research could you possibly have to do here? It’s not like elves have anything in their library that you couldn’t find in Ered Luin--”

Ori eyed the stack of books he’d just finished going through before easing a slender volume from the middle and holding the spine in front of Dwalin’s eyes.

“What’s this?” Dwalin growled.

“An account of Kelden and Morda,” Ori said.

“I can see the title,” Dwalin grumbled, moving the book and Ori’s arm away from his face with surprising gentleness. “What’s so bloody important about it?”

Ori snorted. “This is the first time I’ve ever encountered this story in full -- I’d only found a short anecdote along with a footnote or two in Ered Luin’s library, and the footnotes state that these two had lived during the Second Age, and not the First.”

Dwalin rolled his eyes. “So a scribe got their dates wrong.”

Ori couldn’t help bristling. While he was sure that a date had been miscopied at some point to create the discrepancy, he couldn’t help feeling offended on the scribe’s behalf. To a dwarf, scribes were trained to be objective, first and foremost, and part of absolute objectivity was making sure that events, whether historical or contemporary, were recorded in exact detail, with no omissions, and no _mistakes_. He was about to give his soulmate a blistering lecture about it when he saw the completely uninterested look in his eyes.

Gritting his teeth, he told himself firmly that it was better not to waste time and energy that could be better spent on research.

“They were also soulmates, and this account--” He waggled the book before carefully returning it to the top of the stack. “--details their relationship in full.” He paused before admitting, “Well, there’s a lot of euphemisms, but I’m guessing that was the trend of First Age writings.”

Dwalin scowled ominously. “What’s that doing _here_ , then?”

Ori pretended to think, his own anger defused as he privately enjoying watching Dwalin bristling with outrage. It was a much nicer change of pace from seventeen years ago, when the older dwarf had seemed completely unflappable. “Hmm. It could be that the account was penned by a scribe in Tumunzahar during the First Age. Then, when the city fell to ruin at the beginning of the Second Age, a dwarf must have carried it to Khazad-dum, possibly because they felt it was worth protecting and preserving. And then, when Durin’s Bane was awakened, and Khazad-dum fell, I presume this volume had been in a western library, because from what the librarian tells me, refugees made it to Rivendell and left non-essentials items here before traveling westward to Ered Luin.”

Ori paused, taking in Dwalin’s startled look with no small amount of glee, and then shrugged. “But your guess is as good as mine.”

Dwalin frowned, looking ever so slightly defeated. It was difficult for Ori not to reach over and pat his head in mock sympathy. “Why do _you_ care?” Dwalin grumbled.

Ori snorted, turning back to the open book before him. “Why do you care about the art of warfare? You have your craft. I have mine.”

“There are books back in Ered Luin,” Dwalin muttered. “What did you do, read them all?”

“Even if I had, this is the only place where I’ve found the information contained in these books, Captain--” Ori began.

“Don’t call me that.”

Ori’s eyebrows rose at the sharp retort. He carefully turned back to Dwalin. “Excuse me,” he said slowly, “I thought I was being _polite_.”

“You don’t need to hide behind titles with me,” Dwalin snapped.

“Seeing as how we were never _formally_ introduced, I would hate to be _rude_.” Ori wasn’t doing a good job of pretending innocence, but the reminder about hiding had rankled him.

Dwalin glared at him. “You’ve got to _joking._ ”

Ori turned back to his book, easing the cover closed and setting it down gently before hopping down from his seat. 

Dwalin had grabbed his shoulder faster than Ori could blink. “You’ll not get out of this so easily,” he growled. “We’re going to have this out between us, here and now.”

Ori stared up at him, too stunned to say any number of statements that had jumped immediately to mind. The idea that _he_ had done anything that required an explanation was laughable, especially since _he_ hadn’t been the one to disappear for seventeen years. And, of course, because Ori wasn’t as witty as he wished he could be, the only thing he could manage was, “Let’s argue outside. I don’t want to get kicked out of the library.”

Dwalin blinked at him before rolling his eyes impressively. “Fine.”

One quick apology to the librarian later, the two of them were leaving the library and ducking down a corridor that looked like it saw little use. Dwalin yanked open a door at random, revealing a small store room lined with solid, wooden casks.

“Now, what’s all this about, then?” Dwalin demanded, folding his arms across his chest.

Ori kept his gaze on Dwalin’s eyes and was very definitely not paying attention to how attractively the muscles rippled in Dwalin’s forearms. “I haven’t the faintest idea because you were the one who took offense.”

“If I wanted to be ‘Captained’ to death, I would’ve stayed in Ered Luin,” Dwalin snapped.

“Instead, you just decided to take the law into your own hands and tortured a crime lord in the same way _I’d_ been tortured before finally killing him,” Ori said firmly, feeling his stomach twist. Even nearly two decades after the incident, Ori could still remember what he’d been through like it had happened yesterday.

“He was going to have you _killed_ ,” Dwalin snarled. “Doesn’t that matter at all to you?”

“It matters a great deal to me, though I wonder why _you_ care,” Ori replied. “All you had to do was leave me in that meat locker to freeze to death, and no one would’ve known.”

Dwalin had the nerve to look like Ori had slapped him. “What?”

Ori rolled his eyes impatiently. “There’s always a chance that if a life is cut short, a dwarf with a soulmate might return to the world instead of waiting with Mahal. If I managed to return, I’m sure you would’ve been much happier with the next life I lived. At least that dwarf wouldn’t have _embarrassed_ you by getting kidnapped and tortured.”

“Is that what you think of me?” Dwalin asked, his voice low and dangerous.

At one point in his life, Ori would’ve quaked in his boots if he’d been addressed like that. But he’d been tortured near to breaking, and had survived it. He’d nearly died after having been rescued, and it hadn’t been through any effort of Dwalin’s that he’d survived that either. Ori stood up straighter and snorted.

“Dwalin, hero of Azanulbizar!” Ori snapped, making a sweeping gesture with one hand, as if he were announcing Dwalin to an assembly. “Dwalin, right hand to Thorin Oakenshield, heir to the throne of Erebor! Dwalin, son of Fundin the Fearless! He comes by his lack of fear honestly, if all the tales are true of your father.” He couldn’t help sneering at Dwalin, but at himself as well. “So, really, what’s some dwarfling brat with ink on his fingers and Nori for a brother to you? Absolutely nothing, which you made quite clear to me.”

Dwalin stared at him. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Oh, it wasn’t?” Ori feigned shock. “All those times that you glared at me, and sneered at me behind your helmet, or told me to stop acting stupid when I was _blind_ and _terrified_ that I would never _see_ again? Please, tell me how much you _respected_ me when you addressed every other dwarf in the room instead of me! Tell me how much you gave a damn about me when you yelled at me to stop fighting you!”

“I did that to protect you,” Dwalin snapped. “You were underage at the time, and you hadn’t soulspoken--”

“I hadn’t soulspoken?” Ori shouted, so angry that he started repeating himself. “I hadn’t bloody _soulspoken?_ ” He pulled out the book he’d bound of all of his soulcraft sketches from inside his jacket, and threw it at Dwalin as hard as he could.

Wide-eyed, Dwalin tried to catch the book, but he was half a second too late. It smacked into his chest, and then landed on the floor with a small thump.

“They’re all there, dated and numbered so you can see just how many bloody times I _didn’t_ soulspeak!” Ori shouted. He desperately wanted to break something, but all of the things in the room they were in looked distressingly solid.

Fuming, he watched Dwalin bend down and pick up the sketchbook, wiping the cover with a hand before opening it to the first page.

Ori turned his back on Dwalin, unable to watch any further without losing his temper. He hadn’t intended to show his sketches to anyone, Dwalin least of all. Balin had seen them, of course, but no one else had. Not even Dori. Part of him wanted to rip the book out of Dwalin’s hands and throw it into the nearest fireplace. But Ori knew that, deep down, he could never destroy any book like that, even one that had reminded him of how much pain he’d dealt with when he was younger. 

“How many of these are there?” Dwalin asked faintly. Ori heard the sound of flipping pages.

“I don’t know,” Ori said as evenly as he could through gritted teeth. “I lost count.”

Dwalin flipped through the pages until he paused, probably at the beginning of the blank section -- Ori had included blank pages just in case, not wishing to be caught using his record of the journey as emergency soulspeaking parchment if he didn’t have to. When Dwalin turned a page slowly, Ori couldn’t take it anymore. He turned around and yanked the book out of his soulmate’s hands.

“I would’ve given it back to you if you’d asked,” Dwalin said carefully.

Ori ignored him, closing the book with habitual carefulness before putting it back inside the front of his jacket. “The first one happened a few days after you brought Nori back.”

Dwalin snorted. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that.”

“I mean you ordered us to make sure Nori kept his nose clean, Nori disappeared again, and then I soulspoke for the first time.” Ori folded his arms over his chest. “So, if my not having soulspoken was your excuse for being such a horrible _bastard_ to me, it’s a pretty stupid one.”

Dwalin gave him a sour look. “All right, fine. You’d soulspoken, but you were still-- what, in your mid-sixties?”

“I was fifty-seven,” Ori snapped. “I was old enough to get caught up in Nori’s messes and nearly killed, but not old enough for you to be _civil_ to me? Does that sound logical to you?”

“You weren’t supposed to have gotten involved in Nori’s messes,” Dwalin muttered. “You were supposed to be safe.”

“And I suppose that’s my fault too?” Ori snapped. “That it’s my fault that we were so bloody poor all of our food was likely to go off before we could eat it? That the only way that we were going to _survive_ was for Nori to steal what he could?”

“That’s not it--” Dwalin began, his tone ominous.

“Then what is?” Ori demanded. “Because if I was too young and I hadn’t soulspoken yet, then you don’t have any excuses left.”

Dwalin drew himself up. “Why do you care? It’s not like you ever needed me.”

Ori blinked. And blinked again. And when the words that had come out of his soulmate’s mouth still didn’t make any sense, he stared at Dwalin in disbelief.

Dwalin snorted. “You can play the innocent all you like, but you never needed me. We could be talking to each other, and you always stood up to me. Don’t pretend that you were defenseless there.”

Ori’s confusion quickly turned to anger. “Oh, now _I_ never needed you? And what are these defenses I was supposed to have when I was fifty-seven?” The questions started spilling out of him now almost faster than he could ask them. “Who are you to decide that a soulmate doesn't need his other half? When did I ever tell you that I never needed you? We never _talked_. You just stood there like you’re standing here now, hating me and wishing I was someone I’m not!”

Over the years, whenever Ori would remember all the times he ever stood in Dwalin’s presence, he had never realized just how much his soulmate could bring his physical presence to bear. He did so now, straightening his back, his chest seeming to expand as those ice-blue eyes glared at him. If this is what his enemies faced on the battlefield, Dwalin’s reputation was well-deserved.

“If I had ever hated you,” Dwalin spoke, his tone dark and slow, like some kind of monster from the darkest depths, “you’d be dead.”

Ori gritted his teeth, forcing himself to keep his back straight. He was barely tall enough to reach Dwalin’s shoulder, but he would take every inch he could get. If he hunched over in submission now, he just knew that Dwalin would never take him seriously for the rest of his life.

“I don’t doubt that,” Ori said, feeling a bit stupid that he didn’t have a better rejoinder. He tried to ignore the fact that his voice was shaking, because if he focused on it for more than a moment, he was going to cave, and he couldn’t do it now that he was finally giving Dwalin a piece of his mind. “You had a chance to do it so that no one would blame you--”

“Will you leave off about that damned freezer?” Dwalin shouted. “I couldn’t have let you die anymore than I could’ve cut out my heart! Unlike _you_ , I actually need you in my life!”

“You could’ve fooled me!” Ori yelled back, high and shaking. “First, you rescue me, then you torture and _murder_ the dwarf who was responsible for it--”

“What did you expect me to do, let him live so that he could hurt you _again?_ ” Dwalin demanded.

“I expected you to follow the law!” Ori shouted back. “I expected you to be the better dwarf! _You_ might like hurting people, but I know what it feels like to--” Ori squeezed his eyes tight, clenching his fists and fighting down a wave of nausea as he tried not to remember fists hitting him again and again, being covered in sheets of ice water, and then the chill that froze the blood in his veins. “I would _never_ have wished that on anyone,” he croaked, swallowing hard when he felt his stomach start to rebel. “Not even him.”

When he felt like he could open his eyes without feeling sick, Dwalin was staring at him, his face an expressionless mask.

The door opened.

Ori gasped, bringing his arms up to ward off whatever attack was coming as he turned to look.

Fili’s head thrust inside the small storage room, and for a long moment, Ori could only stare at him in stunned disbelief.

When Fili caught sight of him, he grinned with palpable satisfaction. “I thought I heard you yelling down the corridor,” he said proudly, before turning to Dwalin with a teasing look. “Now, Kili--”

“I’m not Kili,” Dwalin growled.

Fili blinked. “Uh, no,” he agreed faintly. “You’re not.” He turned back to Ori, opening his mouth to ask a question when he took a longer look at Ori. “Ori? You all right?” He frowned suddenly. “What happened?”

Ori shook his head. It was bad enough that he had found himself back in his memories of that time. As sudden as Fili’s appearance was, he didn’t want Fili to start worrying about him right away. “It’s fine.”

Fili shot him an annoyed look before glancing at Dwalin. “Sorry, Mister Dwalin-- I’ll take care of him.” He closed the distance between them slowly and carefully. Ori knew why Fili was being so careful with him when ordinarily, he wouldn’t worry so much, but he didn’t want to be cosseted now, especially not with Dwalin watching the whole thing.

“I said I’m _fine_ ,” Ori snapped, stepping back and shaking off Fili’s hands, which had lifted in order to rub warmth back into Ori’s arms. “I don’t need another Dori in my life, thank you _very_ much.”

Fili stepped back, holding his hands up to where Ori could see them. “Sorry,” he said in a measured tone, calm and soothing. “I want to help, but I’m not sure what you want right now.”

Ori gritted his teeth. “I want you to stop being so bloody _reasonable_ and let me out.”

Fili turned around and walked out of the store room, clearing the doorway and immediately stepping to one side so that Ori had a clear path into the corridor.

Without looking back, Ori stomped out and started back down the hallway, heading towards the library.

“Can I do anything else to help?” Fili asked, falling into step beside Ori easily, but keeping his distance.

Ori was about to answer when he saw Fili shake his head firmly and wave a discreet hand at his side to something on Ori’s left.

Ori turned, and found Dwalin looking irritable as their eyes met.

Groaning out loud from frustration, Ori threw his hands up. “I’m not going to be able to focus on my research. Just-- leave me alone for three hours. I need to clear my head.”

Ori didn’t bother waiting for a response. Instead, he walked faster and turned a corner, deliberately letting himself get lost in Rivendell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who's curious, the poem that Bilbo is translating is a heavily-altered version of _Puedo Morir Mañana_ as sung by Armando Manzanero. I heard it years ago, and I thought it was poetic and pretty.
> 
> As for Istimiel, she's completely an original character, and I came up with her name using [this website](http://www.grey-company.org/Circle/language/com2elv.htm). The root of her name is supposed to be Sindarin for "to learn", though I could've messed up.


End file.
